(Bloomberg) -- France’s National Assembly reran a vote to elect its new vice presidents Friday after more than the allowed number of ballots was cast, assembly President Yael Braun-Pivet said.
The evidence of ballot-box stuffing — 10 extra votes were discovered by the official tellers — follows France’s early parliamentary election that ended July 7 with a redrawing of the political map and fragmented power in parliament.
“I’m flabbergasted,” Socialist Party lawmaker Guillaume Garot, first elected to the 577-seat assembly in 2007, told broadcaster LCP. He said it’s the first time he’d witnessed such an irregularity “and I hope it is the last one.”
Socialist lawmaker Jerome Guedj called for an investigation.
Unlike regular votes that are conducted electronically, elections of top parliamentary officers in France require each lawmaker to cast a physical ballot.
After the first ballot, Braun-Pivet — herself just elected on Thursday — said she received a unanimous opinion from the tellers who tallied the votes and said, “We’re going to have to rerun the vote.”
President Emmanuel Macron last month dissolved parliament and called an early legislative election, throwing France into political chaos and fragmenting the lower house into three primary groups without enough seats to govern on their own.
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