France tries again to rewrite New Caledonia’s voter rolls

Who gets a vote in local elections is one of the biggest challenges for New Caledonia – an issue with a vexed history. France’s new changes to voter eligibility, endorsed by its Parliament, deepen political divisions as the territory prepares to hold local elections in June.

Restricting the right to vote on local issues in the French Pacific territory to long-term residents – as opposed to transient French officials or newcomers – was a critical compromise sought by independence parties in peace agreements from 1988. Having fought to shake off French colonials, independence leaders wanted to protect their mainly Indigenous supporters after years of French policy to outnumber them by importing newcomers.

Almost 40 years later, the provisions still apply, and they contribute to New Caledonia’s current political impasse.

The 1998 Noumea Accord provided for a series of referendums on independence. The last, and most controversial, in 2021, was boycotted during the Covid-19 pandemic by independence parties who then called for another. Political deadlock has prevailed ever since.

Loyalist parties have pressured France to abolish the voter restrictions in recent years, as they progressively lost their dominance in the local Congress. Independence parties won the majority from 2019, even as loyalists manoeuvred to take over the collegial cabinet from early 2025. France’s own compromise on voter eligibility, changing its “one-person-one-vote” constitution specifically for New Caledonia, was only ever temporary. As the Noumea Accord has run overtime, the provision has increasingly favoured longstanding, and therefore Indigenous, residents.

In 2024, President Emmanuel Macron’s government tried to ram through constitutional change to expand voter eligibility, causing outrage among independence supporters that led to months of violence and 14 deaths. Macron eventually abandoned the process. In mid-2025, he negotiated a Bougival Accord plan for New Caledonia’s future as a state within France, seeking parliamentary support for constitutional reform to implement it even as the core independence coalition withdrew from it.

On 2 April, this constitutional reform in turn failed, rendering the Accord dead in the water. While the National Assembly technically declined to debate the change, the reality is Macron, no longer holding the majority, failed to secure the necessary support, once the Socialist party had rejected it. At the time, Marine Le Pen’s hard-right Rassemblement National, which had also opposed the Bougival Accord, indicated that her party would however vote in support of opening the electoral body.

Now, Macron has again sought French parliamentary support for broadening voter eligibility, the very issue inciting violence in 2024, but this time over a matter of weeks. On 7 May, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu announced he would legislate to open the electorate for local elections, which France, after postponing them three times from April 2024, has now scheduled for 28 June 2026.

Both sides, not just independence parties, objected to the change this time, albeit for different reasons. The core independence coalition, which had declined an earlier request by Lecornu to “make a gesture” by accepting expanded eligibility, see the move as another attempt at forced change, and have reaffirmed continued opposition to any opening of the electoral roll for provincial elections without an overall political agreement. Still, they note the importance of proceeding with local elections to install democratic representatives for the dialogue ahead. Non-independence parties say the partial opening does not go far enough. They want to open voter eligibility to all.

A local Congress vote on 18 May showed complex nuances: 25 voted in favour, mostly non-independence and one independence party; 14 voted against, including all 13 independence coalition members; and 13 non-independence members abstained.

Meanwhile, in Paris, uncertainty surrounds even the legislative process Lecornu is using. Such change requires constitutional amendment, as Macron sought in his aborted 2024 attempt. But Lecornu sought simple legislative change, relying on a December 2023 judgement by France’s State Council, which, while confirming a change to voter eligibility for New Caledonia required constitutional amendment, allowed legislating an organic law for “strictly indispensable” adjustments.

A further complication is that Lecornu proposed adding two kinds of voter to the electoral body. The first is “natifs”, or long-term local residents inadvertently left off the restricted voter list because the original organic law loosely referred to “children” of eligible voters rather than “descendants”. This excluded around 10,000 voters, both indigenous (around 4,000) and non-indigenous (6,000). The State Council specifically referred to the descendent issue, suggesting its reference to simple legislation may well apply. Lecornu also added “partners” of eligible voters – around 1,800 new voters – more controversially, since some are relative newcomers and proving their status could take time with elections only weeks away.

On 18 and 19 May the Senate and National Assembly endorsed extending the rolls to include “natifs” but not partners. The Constitutional Council must now provide a ruling. The loyalist MP in Paris immediately threatened not to participate in future discussions because the change does not go far enough. Independence Senator Robert Xowie described the legislation as forced change without a local wider political agreement, MP Emmanuel Tjibaou reiterating that the independence coalition would nonetheless participate in local elections.

Meanwhile all parties are preparing for the elections in an already tense local environment, overseen by 2,300 French security personnel, most present since the 2024 turmoil. Renewed bitterness over voter eligibility compounds the prevailing fear and uncertainty, hardly precursors for a peaceful, uncontroversial local election, which will be vital to deliver accepted representatives and calm dialogue about the future.