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French MEP Brice Hortefeux wins the palm of voting errors with a 292 score

Voting lists being prepared at European Parliament. Some MEPs get more mixed up than other when it comes to ballots

Brice Hortefeux has asked to change its vote 292 times at European Parliament during the last 5 years. Most of the 750 other MEPs never change their vote.

The European Parliament is compared to the Babylon tower: it has more languages than any other, more lawmakers, more buildings, and more ideas. Like this one :  the European Parliaments acknowledges that its members can make mistakes when they have to vote on 10 different texts, each including 50 amendments.

So if they make such a mistake, they can just change their mind : EP rules allow them to simply change their mind.

Weirdly enough, French MEPs have been using this system a lot, especially during the last 5 years.

Brice Hortefeux, who used to be Sarkozy’s Interior ministry, has changed its vote 292 times during the last 5 years according to VoteWatch. That’s the worst score of all the 751 MEPs : most of them do not use the system.

But being the black sheep of the Parliament is not much of a problem for its party Les Républicains: they already decided to send him again to Strasbourg for the next five years, by putting him 5th of the Les Republicains list for the vote.

Extreme-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon is also used in this club: he has changed its vote 266 times, and Rachida Dati, another French MEP, 198 times.

Voting sessions of the European Parliament can be long and complex. Elected officials have voting lists to rely on, established by their group or assistants. According to some of them, putting the lists together takes ages : the voting list should get the agreement of a whole delegation or group, and MEPs discuss until the last minute : national delegations have their own list, prepared after group meeting have given their priorities.

Then the sheets have to be printed in time, and are often brought to MEPs at the last minute. As only MEPs are allowed in the chamber, assistants often have to rush to the doors and ask a usher in black tail to bring it to their MEPs.

National rally has been doing that a lot too, but only before 2016 ; when an article flagged the link between their mistakes and the fake assistant issue, they dramatically stopped changing their votes.

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