diff -r 7a62b5ee32ec Lib/test/test_xml_etree.py
--- a/Lib/test/test_xml_etree.py	Thu Jan 10 11:15:57 2013 -0500
+++ b/Lib/test/test_xml_etree.py	Thu Jan 10 20:09:52 2013 +0200
@@ -375,6 +375,8 @@
     'subtext'
     >>> ET.ElementTree(elem).findtext("section/tag")
     'subtext'
+    >>> ET.XML('<root><empty /></root>').findtext('empty')
+    ''
     >>> summarize_list(elem.findall("."))
     ['body']
     >>> summarize_list(elem.findall("tag"))
diff -r 7a62b5ee32ec Modules/_elementtree.c
--- a/Modules/_elementtree.c	Thu Jan 10 11:15:57 2013 -0500
+++ b/Modules/_elementtree.c	Thu Jan 10 20:09:52 2013 +0200
@@ -1132,7 +1132,7 @@
 
             PyObject* text = element_get_text(item);
             if (text == Py_None)
-                return PyBytes_FromString("");
+                return PyUnicode_New(0, 0);
             Py_XINCREF(text);
             return text;
         }