French officils were unpleasantly surprised at the polling station of the commune of Ruffey-lès-Echirey, Côte-d’Or, on Sunday, May 7, 2017, France3-regions reported.
Municipal officials found that stacks of ballots prepared the day before had been tampered with, and empty ballot papers were missing for Marine Le Pen.
At the opening of the only polling station of Ruffey-les-Echirey around 7:30, the assessors discovered the breach. The two stacks of ballot papers, one for Emmanuel Macron and the other for Marine Le Pen, were no longer equal, as required by the electoral code.
Voters for Marine Le Pen in the commune were only offered 140 ballots against 973 – the number of registered voters in Ruffey, in the name of the candidate of En marche!
Several hundred “Marine Le Pen” bulletins were deliberately stolen during the night, thus compromising the fairness of voting for two candidates at the polling station.
But it took more than that to disturb the officials in Ruffey: The mayor, Nadine Mutin and her first deputy quickly contacted the prefecture of Côte-d’Or to report the incident. The latter provided them with official ballot papers thirty minutes later. The office with enough Le Pen ballots opened at 8 am, voting was able to commence without delay.
There was no break-in recorded at the polling station. Was it a person with the keys, or a particularly clever burglar? Why leave 140 ballots and not take everything? The gendarmerie arrived to investigate the incident, and the elected officials have announced that they would file a complaint the day after the second round.
Another surprise awaited officials around 6:30 pm with the discovery by children of some missing ballots. These were found in a sewer outlet in the schoolyard.
Ruffey-lès-Echirey had voted for François Fillon in first round with 28.59 percent of the vote, ahead of Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.