These few signatures that could cost Martine Aubry his election

Illustration of a voter during the municipal election in Lille.

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• Socialist Martine Aubry was re-elected mayor of Lille for a fourth term. 

• Only 227 votes separated her from her environmental opponent, Stéphane Baly.

• Several appeals have been filed against this election, including one by Violette Spillebout, candidate for Lrem.

Signing is not voting.

On Sunday June 28, Martine Aubry was elected for a fourth term as mayor of Lille.

A victory for the socialist in the snatch with only 227 votes away from the environmental candidate, Stéphane Baly.

The latter will finally file an appeal against this election before the administrative court of Lille.

Another appeal was also filed by Violette Spillebout (LREM), who finished third in the second round.

His lawyer, also presented the progress of the case, this Thursday.

In her appeal, filed at the beginning of July, Violette Spillebout's list highlighted "many irregularities that were observed during Martine Aubry's campaign but also during the voting operations", recalls Master Héloïse Hicter, lawyer specializing in law public.

Since then, things have not stood still.

The mayor of Lille filed a defense in court while the applicants continued their investigations.

Three elements were highlighted in particular by Violette Spillebout's advice: the supposed use of the city's resources by Martine Aubry to campaign, the controversial hiring of boxing champion Licia Boudersa as mayor the day after the first round and differences in signatures on electoral registers.

EELV and LREM in search of disputed signatures

It is this last point which is particularly interesting.

"Since the introduction of the appeal, we have searched the registers of 29 offices out of the 127 and the number of irregularities is significant", explains Hicter without giving a precise figure.

By irregularity, the lawyer means a signature from the same voter that is radically different from one round to another.

This work, Stéphane Baly's list also does.

"The number of irregularities noted should reach or even exceed that of the difference in votes," says Violette Spillebout's lawyer.

According to the latter, it is on the same argument that the administrative court of Guadeloupe was based to invalidate, last September, the municipal election in Capesterre de Marie-Galante.

Except that in this specific case, the difference was only eight votes.

“If we bring in between 80 and 100 disputed signatures, that should be enough.

The judge can in fact proceed by extrapolation according to the number of offices studied, ”insists Hicter.

Decision no later than March 2021

If Ingrid Brûlant, municipal councilor LREM, clearly denounces the "excesses of an old political system which maintains in place at each election the same people with the same methods", the lawyer remains for her part more cautious.

“Obviously there is a complicity, the whole being to know from whom.

An assessor, a voter, Martine Aubry's team?

We do not know.

As we do not know either who benefits from these signatures.

The important thing is that it alters the sincerity of the election, ”she assures us.

The date of the hearing before the administrative tribunal has not yet been set but it will take place before March 11, 2021. The decision may be the subject of an appeal procedure before the Council of State, extending the delay of several months so that one knows definitively if Martine Aubry will remain mayor of Lille.

Contacted by

, Lille town hall has not yet followed up.

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• Justice

• Recourse

• Martine Aubry

• Violet Spillebout

• Municipal elections

• Lille