Benoît Payan, the mayor of Marseille, “favorable” to direct universal suffrage in his city

Benoît Payan, mayor of Marseille, declared himself on Wednesday July 17 in favor of the election of the mayors of Paris, Lyon and Marseille by direct universal suffrage, as Emmanuel Macron argued the day before during his press conference. The mayor of Marseille believes that he “There is no reason why we should do things differently in Paris, Lyon and Marseille”. He judges thus “feasible” to change the voting method from the next municipal elections in 2026. For Benoît Payan, “It is enough to make a very simple law”.

He welcomes this initiative of the Head of State, who “would make things readable”. “I want to make a Marseillais, a voice, like a Bordeaux resident, a voice”, he argues. The elected official also recalls that he “has always been in favor of simplifying things”. Benoît Payan therefore wants a voting method to be adopted “simple and transparent” for his city. “If the government intends to make Paris, Lyon and Marseille common law, it has my support”he insists.

Benoît Payan considers that this change in voting method “won’t change much in terms of results”. On the contrary, he explains that the ballot so far in place “led to [faire] too many differences between the districts”. He thus accuses “certain executives, from the right or the left, tended to take more care of the districts which were favorable to them than the others”.