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The three plebiscites conducted by Louis-Napoleon between 1851 and 1870 do not seem worthy of too much scholarly attention, since the overwhelmingly positive verdict they returned for the regime was entirely predictable. However, there is an unfamiliar aspect to these exercises in authoritarian democracy, which reveals a great deal about a subversive facet of voting and electoral culture in France: the use of the ballot paper as a means of protest and raising issues. For the thousands of annotated papers that were cast in these plebiscites, and have been conserved in the archival dossiers, are excellent examples of a tradition of spoiling votes that dates back to the Revolution of 1789. Indeed, the deliberate invalidation of ballot papers has, of late, become still more deeply ingrained and this article will seek to explain the origins of a particularly enduring French electoral phenomenon.
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