After the conquest by a few votes by the rebels of the town halls of Vaulx-en-Velin, Vénissieux and Saint-Fons, appeals were filed in these municipalities to contest the results.
A communist stronghold for 80 years which swings by 25 votes. The resounding capture of Vénissieux town hall by rebellious MP Idir Boumertit came down to the wire. So much so that it could be called into question. An appeal was in fact filed, not by the outgoing PCF councilor, Michèle Picard, but by the centrist candidate Pascal Dureau. The latter targets Quentin Taeb, a candidate labeled as far right by the prefecture, placed in police custody a few days before the election. An investigation has in fact been opened into suspicions of fraudulent registration on the electoral lists on his part and that of his entourage. Enough to distort the results, according to Pascal Dureau, particularly those of the first round. Four lists were maintained for the second round in Vénissieux, the centrist (20.44%) however arriving far behind the outgoing PCF mayor (33.90) and the rebellious winner (34.11%).
In the neighboring commune of Saint-Fons, the gap in favor of LFI is barely higher, with 126 votes ahead for Hadi Mebarki (40.75%) over the centrist David Debat (37.12%). Here again it is a candidate with a lower score who challenges the sincerity of the vote. The outgoing mayor Christian Duchêne (DVG) points out the cancellation of his ballots by the prefecture on the morning of the first round, because of the absence of mention of the nationality of one of his running mates, who is foreign. Same case in Vaulx-en-Velin where the bulletins of the centrist Christine Bertin were canceled on the morning of the second round this time. The one who would have seen herself as arbiter of the duel between the outgoing socialist mayor Hélène Geoffroy (49.51%) and the rebellious winner Abdelkader Lahmar (50.49%) believes she has lost possible seats on the council. She saw her votes counted as zero. In total, more than 700 invalid ballots were recorded in Vaulx for this second round, compared to around a hundred in the first. The election of the LFI mayor was decided by 124 votes.
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Extremely rare cancellations
The outcome of these various appeals will not be known before the end of the summer. In towns with more than 9,000 inhabitants, they must be processed within a legal period of three months after the validation of the campaign accounts by the dedicated commission, which itself has two months. Having jurisdiction over several departments, the Lyon administrative court indicates having recorded 171 electoral protests, including 105 referred to the prefecture. “This number is at this stage comparable to the year 2020”he says. In the Rhône department, the municipalities of Genas, Givors, Grigny, Saint-Priest, Bron and Rillieux-la-Pape are also the subject of appeals. But the differences were so significant that the sincerity of the vote should not be called into question.
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Even though irregularities may appear, the constitutional council only provides for the annulment of an election in the event of a breach of this “sincerity”. We therefore understand that the difference in votes constitutes an important criterion. The appeal filed in Lyon by Jean-Michel Aulas thus appears unlikely to be winnable in view of the 2,762 votes behind the outgoing environmentalist mayor Grégory Doucet, re-elected with 50.67% of the votes. “A tiny advance”according to the former boss of OL who mentioned as soon as the polls came out of «nombreuses irrégularités»believing for example to have detected differences in color tone on certain ballots of his opponent. In all cases, the decision of the administrative court can be contested before the Council of State. Cases of election cancellations remain very rare
