“
An announced fiasco.
At the end of four weeks of forced march, the senators of the commission of the laws submitted, this Thursday, their conclusions as to the dysfunctions which marred the distribution of the electoral folds during the two rounds of the regional and departmental elections. According to them, these elections were the scene of an "
unprecedented
" logistical failure
of distribution, for which the service provider Adrexo is largely responsible. "
The Adrexo company uses temporary workers on a massive scale and the training of these temporary workers is absolutely ineffective,
" said the chairman of the Senate Law Committee François-Noël Buffet (LR) at a press conference.
Read also: Distribution of electoral propaganda: behind the scenes of Adrexo's failure
Following a framework agreement concluded by the State in December 2020, the distribution of electoral envelopes was entrusted to Adrexo for four years in seven regions and 51 departments.
Shared with La Poste (until then in a monopoly situation), the allocation of part of the electoral distribution to a private service provider follows the transposition of a European directive on the opening up of the postal service to competition.
But local elected officials quickly pointed out dysfunctions, with a large number of voters who have never seen the color of these folds. According to a Cevipof survey, a quarter of the French would not have received any electoral propaganda document in the first round (according to Adrexo, 5.3% of the French did not receive any in the departmental and 7.2% in the regional). Figures much higher than those announced by Minister Delegate for Citizenship Marlène Schiappa who had announced that only 21,000 voters had not received professions of faith, based on figures provided by Adrexo.
For the second round, the commission quotes the figures of the operators (La Poste and Adrexo) - 26.6% of the voters would not have received any propaganda for the departmental elections and 40.3% for the regional ones -, judging these data "
under -evaluated
”.
"
We realized that Adrexo was not up to the distribution,
" added Mr. Buffet, rapporteur for the fact-
finding
mission responsible for establishing the incidents that punctuated the ballot.
"
The dysfunctions noted are largely attributable to the attribution by the Ministry of the Interior of the organization of part of the operations (...) to operators who did not have the operational capacity
", notes the committee. in his report.
A lack of qualification?
The chairman of the law committee also questioned the competence of the service provider Adrexo in terms of mail delivery, estimated at 87.5% of its turnover during the procurement.
However, according to the work of the committee, only 3.3% of Adrexo's turnover actually corresponded to mail delivery, the rest being linked to the distribution of printed advertising material.
To read also: Regional: Adrexo recognizes again "many difficulties" in the distribution of the folds
The 200-page report submitted by the senators is supported by twelve proposals aimed at preventing errors from repeating themselves: they thus call for "
improving the reporting systems imposed on operators, in order to put an end to the discrepancies between declared and observed figures,"
»Shocked by the feedback on folds abandoned in nature, or knowingly left on the side.
“
The prefecture of the Vosges, for example, notes that the mayor of a municipality had noted that none of the inhabitants of this one had received electoral propaganda, while the reporting showed a rate of 100% of envelopes distributed. ...
”, underlines the report.
The report contains several screenshots of discussions with locally elected Senate officials.
Returning to the root of the dysfunctions, the Law Commission calls for making the call for tenders allowing the award of the contract much more demanding by giving "
the preponderance to operational resources
", by "
specifying and standardizing the distribution instructions to be given. to agents
”, or by“
specifying, in the clauses of the public contract, the minimum training requirements for agents in charge of distribution.
“Indeed, Adrexo employees have only benefited from one hour of training, against three days for employees of La Poste. Faced with these disparities, the Senate calls not to exclude "
the attribution of all the lots of the market to the same postal operator
" - that is to say La Poste - "
without however granting it a monopoly or exempting it from any competition, which would be contrary to European law.
"