The name's Cool, Vincent Cool. But there's nothing cool about what just happened to this local French candidate and his running mate Florence Trévisan.

On Sunday, the left-wing "Divers Gauche" pair came out on top of the first round of departmental elections, in the canton of Ribemont in northern France, with 37,25% of suffrages, in strong position to win ahead of the second-round runoff. So far, so good.

But on Monday, as Florence Trévisan told local daily L'Aisne Nouvelle, they received a phone call informing them they had missed the registration deadline for the second round, and therefore could not be on the ballots come next Sunday.

"Obviously, we're taking it pretty hard ..." Mr. Cool told FranceInfo. The candidate, who is already the mayor of Ribemont, explains that the email from the national authorities "ended up in my spam." His running mate received no email at all.

The candidates had first been notified of the registration date back in April — but the Monday deadline had skipped their mind, "I was sure it was Tuesday," he said.

The office of the prefecture has announced that no exception would be made, leading the pair to break the bad news to their supporters by text message. Definitely not cool.