On 11 June, residents of Wiltz, like the rest of Luxembourg, will cast their votes to determine the town’s leadership for the next six years. Voters have the choice between the Christian Social People’s Party (CSV), the Democratic Party (DP), and the Luxembourg Socialist Workers’ Party (LSAP). Ahead of the elections, voters usually receive sample ballot papers and official invitations, but this time, the pre-election mail sparked controversy in Wiltz.
Typically, sample ballot papers sent to households bear the word “SPECIMEN” across the page. However, in this particular case, the letters partially or entirely obscured the names of five candidates from the only opposition party, while the names of all CSV and LSAP candidates were clearly legible.
Maurice Muller, a DP candidate, expressed doubts about the situation, suspecting potential political motives. He stated, “we suspected that this might be politically motivated, that was the first suspicion we had.” He noted that the party thought these doubts were justified “because we know from experience that the municipality is not as transparent as we from the DP would like it to be.”
The Ministry of Home Affairs told our colleagues at RTL.lu that the communes are responsible for printing the ballot papers and specimens, and that they can choose the printing company themselves.
The president of the main polling station in Wiltz confirmed that some names were indeed concealed by the word “SPECIMEN.” Around 3,800 invitations were printed and distributed to households, necessitating the use of multiple computers during the printing process. However, it was discovered on 1 June that some specimens were printed from an incorrect file. As a result, a new specimen was prepared, ensuring that the bold letters no longer covered the names of specific candidates. This revised version was sent out on 2 June and is expected to reach all households by Tuesday at the latest.
Municipal officials stressed that, given the politically neutral context of the elections, the municipal executive board (Schäfferot) was not involved in the organisation, thus ruling out any political motivation behind the error. The DP acknowledged this explanation and expressed satisfaction with it.
The invitations are generated by the GESCOM programme of the Intercommunal Syndicate for IT Management (SIGI) before being printed and sent alongside the specimen by the respective administrations. Official ballot papers, on the other hand, are printed by a single printing company. The Ministry of Home Affairs described the incident in Wiltz as “unfortunate,” particularly because only the names of DP candidates were affected. The new version is evidently less problematic:
