Two days before the election, the Ministry of the Interior assured Friday that “more than a third” of voters had received the envelopes containing the professions of faith and ballots from the candidate lists for the European Parliament.
Published
Reading time: 2 mins
Only two days until the European elections. As voting day approaches, many French people are surprised, Friday June 7, to have not yet received the electoral propaganda. These envelopes, systematically sent to voters before an election, contain the professions of faith of the candidates and the ballot papers.
On social networks, Internet users are worried about having not yet received anything. The boss of the rebels, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, also took up the subject. “Why don’t professions of faith happen in certain neighborhoods?”he thundered on Saturday during a meeting in Toulouse, while the head of the list Manon Aubry questioned Wednesday on franceinfo about the conditions for organizing the vote.
However, the sending of electoral propaganda to the 49.5 million registered voters is taking place without a hitch, according to the Ministry of the Interior. After an examination by the national propaganda commission, which ensures their compliance, the candidates’ professions of faith and ballots are sent by mail to voters by the prefectures or their service providers, specifies the Ministry of the Interior. “Envelope operations must be finalized on the Wednesday preceding the vote [le 5 juin donc, pour le scrutin européen]so that the postal operator ensures their distribution to voters in the days preceding the election”.
Election propaganda mailings “are being completed”and the authorities do not report “no particular difficulties”. The Ministry of the Interior specifies Friday morning that “more than a third of voters have already received their propaganda”.
At La Poste, responsible for distributing electoral propaganda, “everything is going normally”also manages the group at franceinfo. “We distribute as the prefectures give us the envelopes”, specifies La Poste. The distribution carried out by the factors can therefore intervene “until Saturday inclusive”. A rule that concerns “all territories”.
Whether they arrive Friday or Saturday, the envelopes received by voters will be incomplete anyway. The costs of printing propaganda and ballot papers are the responsibility of the candidates. Several lists, out of the 38 competing for the European elections, do not have the means to transmit their bulletins and programs to all voters. The number of professions of faith received varies for each department: 15 professions of faith are thus sent to Moselle, specifies the prefecturecompared to 16 in Yonne. In the Pyrénées-Orientales, 17 lists did not provide any electoral documents.
On the day of the vote, the ballots for the 38 lists will not all be available in the polling stations either, due to the manufacturing cost being too high for certain lists, reports an article from World. It is however possible for voters to print their own ballots, for example from the prefectural sites, provided that they respect specific criteria: the ballot must be printed in landscape format, on an A4 sheet double-sided if the ballot is designed like this, on white paper with a weight between 70g/m² and 80g/m² and with a single color ink.