French mayor accused of falsifying election count … of village's 39 votes

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/16/french-village-mayor-accused-election-fraud

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The village of Lignières-sur-Aire in the Meuse is a close-knit place with 51 registered inhabitants. Difficult to falsify an election, one would think.

However, the mayor of the hamlet in north-eastern France has been accused of doing just that in a desperate attempt to hang on to his seat for a fourth term in office.

After declaring himself the outright winner in the first round of municipal elections in March with 28 of the 39 votes cast, Guy Aubry is said to have then destroyed the ballot papers and sat back down in his mayoral chair.

An investigation was launched when 24 villagers went to the local gendarmes complaining that they had voted for his rival. They suggested Aubry had received only 15 votes and lost the election.

Aubry, a chicken farmer who first became village mayor in March 2001, is accused of arranging to be alone in the polling station with a partially sighted political colleague, and of changing papers.

"A certain number of troubling elements lead us to think there has perhaps been some fraud," the public prosecutor Rémi Coutin told Le Parisien newspaper after opening an investigation.

Coutin said the mayor appeared to have changed the rota of polling station invigilators, meaning that he found himself alone in the middle of the day "with a visually impaired running mate".

The prosecutor said officers were looking into whether the mayor had obtained a duplicate set of keys for the ballot boxes, tampered with votes and then destroyed them. L'Est Republicain newspaper reported that gendarmes had found remains of voting papers in the fireplace at the mayor's home.

Aubry was arrested this week and held in police custody for 24 hours after his rival lodged a legal complaint. He could face up to five years in prison if charged and convicted of electoral fraud.

Local administration officials have rejected the claims and say they found no grounds to question the result.

In a statement to l'Est Republicain, Aubry said he "formally denied the false allegations" against him, and noted that his disputed vote tally was the same as in the 2008 elections.

"The count took place without any incident and the declaration after the election was signed by everyone … without even the slightest comment or challenge," he said.

Aubry described the accusations as "seriously false and made without even the most minimal proof". L'Est Republicain said it stood by its story.