So far the candidates tried to get promises of sponsorships. But by the end of the week, the Constitutional Council will send the official forms to each of the approximately 42,000 elected officials authorized to give their signature. Laurent Fabius, the President of the Constitutional Council, will re-explain the rules at a press conference. And this passage from “promises” to “signatures” is not trivial for the candidates.
This is a new stage that some approach with a little apprehension, because there is “not 100% transformation between promise and sponsorship”, explains an elder. First, the mayors may have changed their minds or “to have been canvassed by another candidate who promises them the moon”.
The second fear of the teams collecting these signatures is that the forms are incorrectly completed. The typical example: the first name entered instead of the last name or vice versa. A crossing out, a coffee stain… “If the sponsorship is incorrectly completed, it is invalid”. Also invalid, the form returned in an envelope that is not the one provided by the Constitutional Council. Mayors are certainly entitled to make mistakes, but in which case they must request a new form from the Constitutional Council. In the teams of candidates, it is feared that a certain number of mayors, already tired of being solicited from all sides, will not make this effort.
“All of this will require a lot of calls to verify that the elected officials who have promised are still on the same line.”
An adviser to a candidateat franceinfo
Sponsorships are then sent directly to the Constitutional Council. Then comes the lottery: twice a week, the updated list of sponsors by candidate is published. With sometimes good surprises when an elected official who had promised nothing at all finally sent his sponsorship. And cold sweats when, conversely, the meter does not climb fast enough.
This obviously applies above all to candidates who have difficulty collecting the 500 signatures – Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Éric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen – or those who have barely passed the bar and who do not have a security mattress. For them, in the coming weeks, it will be necessary to check that all the promises become signatures, while continuing to look for the missing sponsorships.
More unusual, around Emmanuel Macron: sponsorships risk arriving at the Constitutional Council even before he declares his candidacy. Even if at En Marche! we would prefer that elected officials wait a bit.