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"With the thousands of references to \"flan,\" \"tomato\" and the weather in Budapest, Hungary, that took place on French social media over the weekend, one might think France was overcome with excitement about a cooking expo in Central Europe. \nThe truth? French election watchers were using code words to report early voting results in the country's presidential election, bypassing a national law that bans disclosing results before 8 p.m. on election days, according to The New York Times. \nMany Twitter users considered the online reporting an act of protest against the blackout law.\n\n#RadioLondres \u201C@aurelmondon: In French Island Saint Pierre &amp; Miquelon #Sarkozy (23%) is behind Hollande (30%) and #MELENCHON (24%)\u201D\n\u2014 Fabien (@Menilmuche) April 22, 2012\n\n\nLe Flan est p\u00E9rim\u00E9 , je r\u00E9p\u00E8te , le flan est p\u00E9rim\u00E9 #radiolondres\n\u2014 Le ch\u00EAne 90 (@Lechene90) April 23, 2012\n\n\"Flan\" stood for Fran\u00E7ois Hollande, the Socialist challenger to sitting President Nicolas Sarkozy \u2014 who was himself represented by the temperature in Budapest, as his father was born in Hungary. \"Tomato\" was code for the leftist candidate Jean-Luc M\u00E9lenchon \u2014 the red fruit representing Communists.\nEarly election results flew across Twitter and other forms of social media with the hashtag #RadioLondres, a reference to former French President Charles de Gaulle's inspiring messages to the French Resistance broadcast from London during World War II. \nThe results came from media outlets outside France, who are outside the jurisdiction of French law. They had the information by approximately 6:30 p.m. Paris time. If a French media outlet violated the results embargo, it could have faced fines of up to 75,000 euros \u2014 or nearly $99,000. At least one newspaper hinted it would break the blackout in protest, but it refrained from doing so.\nHollande won the most support in the first round of elections \u2014 and thus, \"the flan was in the oven.\" He didn't however, capture enough votes to escape a primary runoff against Sarkozy (\"the temperature in Budapest,\" one might tweet, was about 25 degrees).\nThe French reporting law creates an Election Day environment completely unlike that of the U.S., where exit polls and early results are disseminated by some media the very second they're available, although many outlets voluntarily withhold that information until polls are closed.\nDo you think France should overturn this 1977 blackout of official projections and results before 8 p.m.? Tell us in the comments if you think reporting election results before all polls close can affect the results.\nImage courtesy of the Government of France\n      window._msla=window.loadScriptAsync||function(src,id){if(document.getElementById(id))return;var js=document.createElement('script');js.id=id;js.src=src;document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0].parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);};\n_msla(\"//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\",\"twitter_jssdk\");"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/04/23/french-election-twitter/>