Sunday, April 10, voters will be called to the polls to vote in the first round of the presidential election. Before that, they will all receive an envelope containing the professions of faith of all the candidates, as well as the 12 ballots. This weekend, about forty employees of the City and the Agglomeration of Châteauroux participated in this enveloping.
30,000 envelopes in one weekend
The music resounds in the hall of Touvent, and gives the rhythm to the 42 employees spread over six large tables. Standing, they are busy filling the pre-addressed envelopes with a profession of faith and a ballot for each candidate. Each team is well-rehearsed. “It takes 9 minutes and 40 seconds to fill a box with about forty envelopes” explains Sandrine with a smile. This is the third time that she has volunteered to participate in the enveloping. For the financial side, because they are remuneratedbut also “because it allows you to see your colleagues in another setting, and others that you don’t often meet”. Two other employees are in charge of supplying the tables with documents.
From 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Saturday, and until almost 12:30 p.m. Sunday, they filled the nearly 30,000 envelopes for voters of Chateauroux.
– Mary Dorcet
Control by the prefecture
Often, it is the prefectures that take care of the enveloping. But the city decided to offer its employees volunteers “to have an additional income, but also because the atmosphere is friendly” explains Florence Petipez, Deputy Delegate for Elections. But the chosen one warns “It’s very physical, and intensive, they often have pain in their backs, arms, wrists at the end of the weekend.”
This enveloping required a lot of organization upstream: receiving the candidates’ propaganda in different packages, recounting everything, and distributing the work. Patrick Dupont, responsible for information reception, been working on it for several weeks. “This Monday, the prefecture’s control services will come to check that everything is in order, by taking an envelope from each box and counting the documents”. Then the letters will be taken care of by La Poste and distributed at the beginning of the week to all voters.
For the second round, volunteer employees will proceed with the envelope on Wednesday, April 20.