FN anger at joke ‘€5 for vote’ site

A JOKE website that offers €5 to everyone who votes for the Front National in Sunday’s second round of France’s departmental elections has not impressed officials the far-right party.

In a post on Twitter, the anti-EU, anti-immigration party said that it planned to file a complaint against the Belgium-based website votefnetgagne5euros.com

Le Front National n'a évidemment aucun lien avec le site votefnetgagne5euros. Grosse manipulation. Une plainte sera déposée.— Front National (@FN_officiel) March 23, 2015

According to the joke site, anyone who registered with the website and took a photograph of themselves in the voting booth with their ballot paper showing their vote would receive €5 via PayPal.

Offering payment for votes is illegal, and the website prompted outrage on Twitter, before it was revealed as a hoax.

The joke website was set up by offbeat “news” website Nordpress.be. The website’s owner’s later came clean, and revealed that the website had received more than 50,000 visits and 200 mostly abusive emails in a day after the “offer” was made. They said that it took them just 30 minutes to set up and launch the site.

This is the second anti-FN joke launched on social media in the past few days. The organisation SOS Racisme sent out a tweet urging Front National voters not to forget to indicate which of the two candidates in their canton they would prefer to see elected.

Image: votefnetgagne5euros.com screengrab