His ears must be whistling for a few days … This Wednesday morning, Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, was summoned by the Laws Committee, in the Senate, to explain the dysfunctions in the distribution of electoral propaganda for the first round regional and departmental elections.
Significant shortcomings were noted to the point that the entire political class is wondering about the impact that this may have had on the record abstention recorded during the poll on Sunday, June 20. To understand what happened, 20 minutes comes back to what we know about these hiccups.
What happened with the professions of faith?
At each election, the French receive the professions of faith from the candidates allowing them to make an informed choice. For the first round of the 2021 regional and departmental elections, several tens of thousands of French people did not receive the traditional envelope containing electoral propaganda. If Marlène Schiappa mentioned the figure of 1% of envelopes (or 21,000 envelopes) not distributed, Gérald Darmanin estimated, this Wednesday, the figure at 9% and “up to 13% in certain urban areas”.
Voter complaints were reported at polling stations, in the media and on social media. On these, multiple photos testify to the treatment reserved for professions of faith: burnt envelopes, thrown in the trash, remained in stock or even thrown into nature.
Who is in charge of this distribution?
The distribution was entrusted to two entities, La Poste, historical distributor of electoral propaganda and the company Adrexo, whose head office is in Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône). The latter has, since January 1, 2021 and for a period of four years, the responsibility of the distribution of envelopes. The Minister of the Interior told the Senate committee that the regions concerned by the private company are as follows: Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Center-Val-de-Loire, Grand-Est, Hauts- de-France, Normandy and Pays de la Loire. Gérald Darmanin specified that Adrexo’s work was monitored daily by its services, in order to ensure the smooth running of the distribution.
“For weeks now, we have been receiving alerts on a daily basis. For example, hundreds of envelopes containing the candidates’ professions of faith found in the trash, envelopes sent without a ballot or with missing lists. ” @AQuatennens#ConfPressFi pic.twitter.com/x9lm8YNXbm
– France rebellious (@FranceInsoumise) June 15, 2021
Adrexo was awarded part of the contract for an amount of 200 million euros. The Minister of the Interior also recalled that the privatization of distribution was not the work of the government to which he belongs but that it follows the liberalization of distribution services for electoral propaganda in 2005, transposition of a European directive.
How to explain the failures?
The first reason given by the company Adrexo, as of this Monday, is a computer attack that it would have suffered. Gérald Darmanin briefly mentioned this attack without giving more details to the commission. He then put forward the very functioning of the company which, in great difficulty before obtaining the contract, operates with “a lot of temporary workers”. These reasons, added to the “significant logistical challenges” caused by the “concomitance of the two elections” (regional and departmental), would explain the shortcomings observed. The Minister of the Interior suggested that “this market was perhaps too big for them (the company Adrexo)”.
Already in January, the CGT de la Poste expressed doubts about Adrexo’s ability to carry out this mission, highlighting the lack of training of the company’s employees.
All the explanations provided by Adrexo did not completely convince Gérald Darmanin who explained that he was waiting for new explanations in writing.
Will it be the same for the second round of the elections?
After the announcement of the “cyberattack” on Monday, Adrexo specified to set up “specific campaign monitoring at the local level” via a “dedicated support unit, intended for prefectures, sub-prefectures and town halls and procedures monitoring of locally reinforced distributions ”. To ensure the smooth running of the distribution for the second round, the Ministry of the Interior indicated, in a press release, to have summoned La Poste and Adrexo to remind them of “the obligation of result which bound them” and to ask them “Expressly to guarantee that such malfunctions do not recur”.
To ensure the smooth running of the distribution of electoral propaganda, the Secretary General of the Ministry of the Interior, Benoît Albertini wrote this Sunday morning to the prefects asking them to ensure “an effective and systematic supervision of the placing in envelopes. “And” to second an agent of the prefecture to the places where these operations are organized to check their quality “. Distributors will also have to set up an operational monitoring unit and respond to reports “as soon as possible”.
To offset the negative effect of distribution failures on abstention, Marlène Schiappa, Minister Delegate to the Minister of the Interior of France, in charge of Citizenship, announced this Wednesday on the CNews channel, which the government was going to launch a “flash on social media” communication campaign to encourage voters to vote in the second round.
For his part, Gérald Darmanin declared himself in favor of taking things in hand by a “control”, to “ensure the public service of the elections” by stressing that this would “re-muscle the prefectures”.