Lutterbach (France) (AFP)
Voting booths strategically placed, signage and precise route plan for voters, disposable gloves, hydroalcoholic gel ... Lutterbach (Haut-Rhin) set up its polling stations for the municipalities on Friday, a more tedious job than usual in full heart of a coronavirus outbreak.
"It is no more risky than going to the merchant to get your bread, so all the conditions are met for people to be really quiet to come and vote": Rémy Neumann, the mayor (without label) of this town of 6,300 inhabitants who adjoin Mulhouse, are reassuring.
He and his team are doing everything to make voters in the first round of municipal elections on Sunday take the least risk possible. Mulhouse and its district of Bourtzwiller, three kilometers away, are indeed one of the main "clusters" of contamination by the coronavirus in France, since an evangelical gathering which was held there at the end of February.
Thus, if most of the polling stations in the country will have taken a minimum of precautions to limit the risks of transmission of the virus, the layout of the five polling stations in Lutterbach is being studied with the greatest care.
- "Disinfection station" -
After passing through the "disinfection station" at the entrance, where two big jars of hydroalcoholic gel and disposable latex gloves sit enthroned, the Lutterbachois will follow arrowed corridors which will lead them to the assessors' table.
There, they can show their voter card and ID before heading to the voting booths, strategically placed near the wall so that voters can go behind and isolate themselves without having to close the curtain.
"The shelves placed in the polling booths will be disinfected every 30 minutes, as will the door handles at the entrance and at the exit of the office", underlines Julien Ravier, one of the municipal employees busy installing the premises.
The voters will then come out of the voting booth and head for the ballot box by a second path, so as not to come across other voters. Once their duty accomplished, they will leave the gymnasium by another door, there too to limit crossings between fellow citizens as much as possible.
- "Without touching the curtains" -
"People will make a simple path to go to the voting booth, to return, to make their ballot and to go out to the ballot box without touching the curtains or anything else", explains Julien Ravier.
Voters who wish can finally wash their hands in the toilet of the establishment after the vote.
Not stingy with his teams, Rémy Neumann, who is running for a second term, is in any case satisfied that the poll was not canceled, despite the risks: "Personally, I was not for a postponement, it "There has been a lot of investment and, in any case, there should have been a law, it would have destabilized and it would have added chaos to chaos. So it is better that we go through with the exercise of democracy."
The big unknown in Mulhouse and in neighboring municipalities will be participation: will the fear of the coronavirus encourage voters to stay at home?
In front of the gymnasium, Carmen, 59, listened to Emmanuel Macron's speech on Thursday evening: "I don't know yet if I'm going to vote but in principle I think I will go anyway and I will follow his advice. Anyway there will be what is needed in the polling stations and we must continue to live. "
And one of her fellow citizens, aged 74, concluded: "I escaped from diphtheria when I was barely ten days old in 1945 so that's not what will scare me!"
© 2020 AFP