They found the door closed on their way to the polls.
Sunday morning, voters in the Marseille city were forced to postpone their votes for the departmental and regional elections, their offices not having opened for lack of assessors.
A problem solved at 12:30 p.m., according to the town hall.
"We were confronted with a problem of mobilizing assessors", regrets the general direction of the services of the town hall of Marseille.
Out of 480 offices, 40 presidents did not come to pick up their bag on Saturday, ”adds the DGS.
In total, according to the town hall, 2% of the city's offices had not opened at 8 a.m.
According to a press release from the prefecture, there are even 34 polling stations which did not have presidents on Sunday at the opening, adding that "significant delays have been observed in the opening of certain offices".
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The town hall made requisitions, among officials, but of the 40 requisitioned presidents, 20 were missing.
The assessors requisitioned, insisted the town hall, "are not used to it and therefore the opening of the offices is slower".
A computer bug also affected election software on Saturday, she added.
"A democratic scandal"
In the Périer district, to the south of the city, at 8.45 am, it was office 802 which remained closed, with a vigil indicating to disconcerted voters that they had to "come back later". Faced with this observation, voters expressed their dismay. “At 9 am, in my neighborhood of Valentine, there was a crowd in front of the office, the security guard told us that it was closed, that we had to leave, without further information,” laments Béatrice Reinische, voter. of the 11th arrondissement. The prefecture's telephone reception services were saturated with calls on Sunday morning, she reports. “My 18 year old son was voting for the first time, but he had to leave far from Marseille for Father's Day, he will not come back to vote later, it is an attack on our rights! She continues.
On Twitter, the leader of the rebels and deputy for Marseille, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, lambasted these failures in the organization of the poll.
In #Marseille, the union of the gôche more effective in ostracizing LFI than in organizing democracy: 34 polling stations closed!
Shame.
What is such an election worth?
# regionales2021 # departementales2021
- Jean-Luc Mélenchon (@JLMelenchon) June 20, 2021
The town hall, conquered last year by the left coalition "Printemps Marseillais" and today led by the socialist Benoît Payan, was not attacked only by the left of his left. In a press release, the right-wing “Provence United” list, candidate for the departmental elections, judged “absolutely unacceptable to note this disorganization which will undoubtedly have a real impact on the free choice of voters and will encourage abstention”. For their part, the right-wing opposition elected officials in the city council and the group “a will for Marseille” denounced the situation. It is "at best a serious fault, at worst, an attempt at electoral tampering, but in any event, a new democratic scandal".
