The municipal opposition was strongly opposed to the reduction of polling places in Toulouse, fearing that it would impact the European elections. For the majority, this is not the case, with figures to back it up.
“You didn’t anticipate anything,” denounces Aymeric Deheurles, member of the municipal opposition group Alternative Municipaliste Citizen (AMC), during the municipal council which is being held this Wednesday, June 26. At the origin of his accusation: the reduction in the number of voting places in Toulouse. Last August, the Town Hall actually decided, in consultation with the Haute-Garonne prefecture, that they would go from 68 to 54, favoring gymnasiums and multipurpose rooms, in order to simplify the organization of the vote. “This primarily responds to a logistical concern. As Toulouse is the largest constituency in France, due to the fact that Paris, Lyon and Marseille are divided into districts, certain sites experienced low attendance and it was therefore necessary to rationalize the flow of voters”, explained in the Journal Toulousain the deputy to the mayor Pierre Esplugas-Labatut who also put forward the argument of a “difficulty finding assessors”. A decision criticized by certain opposition elected officials who saw it as a political maneuver by the municipal majority to keep voters from neighborhoods that are not favorable to them from the polls. According to Pierre Esplugas-Labatut, it is “a sterile controversy”.
And as proof, he “notes, with a little mischief, that this did not did not prevent the left from making a good score in Toulouse “. In the Pink City, it was in fact the list of the Socialist Party and Place publique, led by Raphaël Glucksmann, which came first with 21.38% of the votes, followed by that of La France Insoumise (LFI), led by Manon Aubry with 19.70% of the votes. And to respond to Agathe Roby, co-president of the AMC group, who estimated, https://twitter.com/RobyAgathe/status/1798351956773335369 (ex-Twitter) that the Town Hall “organized abstention”: “The participation rate is clearly increasing in Toulouse for Europeans”. And if we look at the participation in the relocated offices, it reaches the 57,32%against 54,46% in the 2019 European elections. Which, according to the Aimer Toulouse group, “contradicts the speech made by the opposition of a maneuver intended to discourage voters from traveling”.
Toulouse Town Hall will “do better for the next elections”
Beyond the figures, Aymeric Deheurles continues to affirm that there is a problem of accessibility to voting places. “The Petit Capitole car park (located in Lardenne, Editor’s note) is dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians who have to walk among cars. The fact of having concentrated ten polling stations in the same place undoubtedly makes it possible to “rationalize costs”, but is a total aberration in terms of the organization of travel,” believes the opposition representative. He also judges that public transport was not taken into account by the majority for the movement of voters to their polling place, particularly for those of Pradettes. “You dared to tell people: “Don’t worry, everything is planned, you can use the tram or the bus”. But to suggest this is either to take people for partridges of the year, or to have in no way thought about the total absurdity of what is proposed. In fact, the tramway does not pass through either Les Pradettes or Lardenne, and there is no direct bus journey. We therefore have to go through the Arena, which triples the distance and considerably increases the travel time,” he explains.
And yet, Sacha Briand, deputy mayor of Toulouse responsible in particular for elections and the census, assured, in an email sent to the group Alternative municipaliste citoyenne on Wednesday June 5, that “the new voting places have been the subject of an on-site visit allowing ensure feasibility, accessibility and practical access arrangements (access to public transport networks, parking space etc.)”. And Aymeric Deheurles declared in a tone of irony: “The European elections have since taken place, and it is clear that everything went perfectly well, and that our criticisms were unfounded. Please accept our apologies. This is the sentence I wish I could say.” But this will not be the case since the opposition representative says he has received numerous complaints from voters.
If the municipal majority rejects the opposition’s accusations as a whole, it nevertheless promises that it will ” try to do better for the next elections », as guaranteed by Nicolas Misiak, municipal councilor and co-president of Aimer Toulouse, during a press conference. The next elections will therefore take place this Sunday, June 30 with the first round of the early legislative elections.
