Their ballot to decide the next leader of the Socialist Party will not count. The electronic vote of the Socialists established abroad to choose the future First Secretary of the PS was canceled Thursday after the discovery of a file containing the identifiers of all the members, we learned from the party.
Members of the Socialist Federation of French Citizens Abroad are the only ones to vote by electronic vote. They are about 300 and had started to vote since Wednesday noon, in order to choose the next text of orientation of the party, between the texts of three candidates: the outgoing First Secretary Olivier Faure, the mayor of Rouen Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, and the Mayor of Vaulx-en-Velin Hélène Geoffroy.
The rest of the approximately 41,000 socialist members are called to vote this Thursday between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. in the local sections. The two candidates whose motions come first will be decided in a second round on the 19th, before a Congress scheduled for January 27 to 29 in Marseille.
Results heard overnight from Thursday to Friday
The vote of French people living abroad had been entrusted to an external service provider, “neutral”, but “on Wednesday, obviously, there was a technical bug exploited by someone”, which resulted in ” a theft of files, ”said party number 2 Corinne Narassiguin, warned overnight. She deplores “a malicious act” and does not consider “it is normal that such a file exists”.
“We will continue the investigation,” she said, indicating at this stage that she had no knowledge of fraudulent votes, but the entire voting process was immediately stopped and canceled, especially since the listing was then sent to all members.
According to Patrick Menucci, close to Hélène Geoffroy, a member “entered the menu” of the electronic voting platform and “discovered a listing with the names, identifiers, passwords of all members. He warned everyone. “It is serious, there is a certain suspicion. How and why was such a list made? “, he questioned.
“The existence of this document irremediably taints the sincerity of the vote”, denounced the federal representatives of Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol’s motion in a press release, regretting that “the party leadership failed to organize a secure vote”. The vote of members from abroad cannot be integrated into the result of the national vote, expected overnight from Thursday to Friday.