Since Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the second round of the French presidential election on Sunday April 24, some have claimed on social networks that the election was rigged. A massive fraud that would have allowed the victory of the outgoing president. But the few pieces of evidence provided to demonstrate this alleged fraud are actually fake news.
” This election is set up from scratch! “. ” Without the rigging of the election, Macron would never have won, it is impossible. The day after the vote, tens of thousands of such messages appeared on social media, along with #Fraud. Posts often accompanied by images of the France 2 election evening broadcast on the evening of Sunday April 24 and supposed to prove fraud.
It is a graphic updated live with figures from the Ministry of the Interior and broadcast live by the channel which is pointed out. This will attribute 14,603,774 votes to Marine Le Pen around 9:10 p.m., while the final count of the Ministry of the Interior indicates that she has collected a total of 13,288,686 votes. Proof for some that more than a million votes for the candidate of the National Rally would therefore have flown into nature.
The result of a computer bug
In reality, this erroneous number displayed by France 2 is the result of a computer bug. The software responsible for automatically retrieving data from the Ministry of the Interior has malfunctioned. ” Our tool incorrectly took into account the progress of the count made by the Ministry of the Interior. That is to say that, for certain municipalities, when the count progressed and the number of votes was specified there, our tool did not consider this as an update of the number of votes counted in these municipalities. He treated this information as new figures to be added to the total of the number of votes already counted. “, has clarified to France 24 the technical director of Excense, the service provider in charge of this service.
France 2 finally corrected its error later in the evening. The graph released around 10:40 p.m. thus presented the data provided by the Ministry of the Interior.
The channel and its service provider then apologized for this error which affected the results of the two candidates.
Erratum: a computer error led us to display erroneous figures during the election evening of France 2, Sunday April 24. We apologize to our viewers. Here are some explanations ⤵️
– Info France 2 (@infofrance2) April 25, 2022
The archives of Ministry of the Interior websiteavailable through the tool WaybackMachineshow that Marine Le Pen has never been credited with more votes than she obtained in the final count.
Convergence of conspiracy theories
Among those who actively relay this theory of a massive fraud, we find mainly the traditional actors of the conspiracy, all supporters of Marine Le Pen for the second round. The essayist Morad El Hattab, the Swiss youtuber Chloé Frammery, or the politician François Asselineau. It is the same people who argue that the Covid-19 pandemic is an invention or that the vaccine is a poison, who today claim that there has been fraud.
Lawyers Carlo Alberto Brusa and Maud Marian announced on Friday April 29 that they were filing an appeal with the Constitutional Council to challenge the legality of the election. Carlo Alberto Brusa, influential conspirator and president of the Reaction 19 association, claims to have collected more than 6,000 mandates in support of his appeal.
The appeal to challenge the legality of the second round of presidential elections will be filed tomorrow. You will find out tomorrow. The fraud is acquired and the facts will also be prosecuted as a criminal criminal complaint! more than 6500 people support the appeal thank you ✊✊
— Brusa Carlo Alberto (@cab2626) April 28, 2022
To justify this fraud », it is also based on a document which states that the data servers for the Department of the Interior website are hosted in the United States. Data from polling stations would pass through the United States before being consulted in France.
This is false, the Ministry of the Interior does not host any data abroad. ” Our data collection centers are located on French territory “says the ministry. A content delivery network using different servers internationally is well used, in particular to distribute the results all over the world, but this has nothing to do with the collection of election results and cannot in any way allow fraud.
An international resonance
This news of the rigged election has spread in foreign discussion groups, in particular on Telegram, in Switzerland, Belgium or Spain. In the United States, pro-Trump Arizona Senator Wendy Rogers tweeted on April 25, “ Macron stole the election “. She alludes to the taste of the French for the revolution and encourages them to continue to investigate to prove this alleged fraud.
The Constitutional Council validates the results
The Constitutional Council, responsible for ensuring the regularity of the election, noted several irregularities, made public here. They concern about thirty polling stations in France. However, these are not frauds, but shortcomings in the organization of the vote, as there are in each election. Twenty thousand votes were thus canceled by the Constitutional Council which definitively validated the victory of Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday April 27.
Marine Le Pen has never contested the results. But that does not prevent conspirators from crying fraud, and trying to sow doubt. An initiative inspired by what happened in the United States after the defeat of Donald Trump.