This is traditional in large French cities: polling stations close later than in rural areas.
Saint-Étienne is no exception to the rule and generally, the City submits a request for an exemption to the Loire prefecture, to accommodate voters until 7 p.m., instead of 6 p.m. everywhere else in the department.
For Europeans on June 9, the Stéphanois were entitled to an hour off, just as was the case for the legislative elections in June 2022.
No exemption requested this year
But for these early elections which no one expected, except the head of state and his restricted entourage, the City did not request an exemption.
The polling stations, for these legislative elections on June 30 and July 7, will be open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., in Saint-Étienne as elsewhere.
The reason is simple: the particularly short deadline, which put the municipalities “in a terrible situation” in terms of organizing the vote, as confided by Gilles Artigues, deputy mayor in Saint-Étienne, in our June 16 edition. .
Remobilize assessors, three weeks after the Europeans
Main difficulty: finding assessors. The task is never easy for a city that has a hundred offices.
But it becomes frankly difficult when it comes to finding people ready to mobilize on two summer Sundays, barely three weeks after having already contributed for the Europeans.
Finally, added to this, specifies the press officer of the City, is the “length of the delays for the reporting and processing of the results”.
