In one of the stranger stories to appear in the news this week, the people of Paris, France have voted overwhelmingly to solve a problem that many people weren’t even aware existed. A referendum was held yesterday to determine whether or not the city should ban the for-hire electric scooters that seem to show up all over the place these days. 89% of the participating voters opted to ban them, so beginning in September, they will be gone. But critics are arguing that the referendum didn’t fairly capture the opinions of most of the city. (Associated Press)

Parisians have overwhelmingly voted to banish the French capital’s ubiquitous for-hire electric scooters from their streets.

The 15,000 opinion-dividing mini-machines are now expected to vanish from central Paris at the end of August when the city’s contracts with the three operators expire.

The question City Hall asked voters in a citywide mini-referendum on Sunday was: “For or against self-service scooters in Paris?”

There might be something to the complaint about how the referendum was handled. There are more than 1.3 million registered voters in Paris, but only 103,000 participated in the vote. That’s not even ten percent. But at the same time, it’s hard to have much sympathy for the losing side. If they really wanted to keep the scooters they should have done more to get out the vote.

It appeared that most of the participants were older voters who are less likely to go zipping around the streets on a scooter. The scooters are very popular with tourists, however, so business owners are concerned that their sales will suffer if the tourists can’t easily and quickly get around to their neighborhoods.

So what were the major complaints about the scooters? That’s not entirely clear. Some supporters of the ban claimed that they wind up being left all over the city, creating a cluttered mess. Others point out that there are safety issues with the vehicles. They regularly wind up in accidents and some of those crashes have proven fatal.

So will this issue be coming to the United States? There are dozens of scooter rental companies in America, though they are most commonly seen in larger cities. Back in 2018, Vox wrote about the scooters’ “sudden invasion of American cities.” Regulations for how the scooters are operated and stored still haven’t been fully fleshed out. But the small vehicles are supposedly touted as being “climate-friendly” so we probably won’t see a ban here.