Polish citizens are set to vote in a presidential election on Sunday 10 May, but there is a serious risk that the balloting will be neither free nor fair. Today, 7 May, the final vote on the legislation that will decide whether the election will go ahead or not is expected, but the government is determined to proceed.
As many as 52 countries have already decided to postpone national or local elections because of the pandemic yet Poland is forging ahead, and a combination of daunting logistical challenges and unconcealed attempts by the ruling party to turn the situation to its own advantage are seriously eroding trust in the process.
Why is Poland going forward with the election?
The governing Law and Justice (PiS) party has decided to press on with the election because its loyal ally, incumbent President Andrzej Duda, has been polling favourably. The party needs Duda in his post to finish what it calls its “reconstruction of the state,” which has primarily focused on subordinating independent institutions to its own politicised control.
Incumbent politicians around the globe are receiving a boost in the polls during the uncertainty of coronavirus, as people seek stability during the crisis. Critics say the Polish government wants to capitalise on this rather than have a riskier election later on, when the public health and economic fallout from coronavirus could offer a very different backdrop.
“I’ll be honest. I’ve been studying politics for many years now, and I don’t think anything has ever perturbed me more than the current situation,” said Anna Materska-Sosnowska, political scientist at the University of Warsaw and board member at the Stefan Batory Foundation. “The justifications being used are unimaginable, as is the way that everything is being carried out. It violates every rule out there.”
Legal obstacles
On 6 April, a month before the scheduled election, PiS rammed legislation through Poland’s lower house of parliament, the Sejm, to introduce nationwide postal voting. Unlike the United States, where the expansion of absentee ballots has been spearheaded by Democrats, in Poland it was the ruling party that championed remote voting as its only chance to hold elections on time. The bill was passed late in the evening amid significant concerns about its content and in defiance of a clear constitutional court decision banning changes to electoral laws less than six months before a vote.
The upper house, where the opposition has a razor-thin majority, has stalled the adoption of the postal voting bil but the government has disregarded procedure, ordering state authorities and local governments to transfer voter identification data to the Polish postal service and to start preparing and printing ballots. Without an actual law in force, the country is therefore still set to hold in-person balloting on 10 May.
The final vote on the legislation is expected today, 7 May, and carries a major challenge to the government. Some lawmakers in the ruling party also want the election postponed, and if they vote against the postal ballot, the government could lose its slim parliamentary majority.
“If the bill on postal voting is rejected then we may have a political crisis,” Health Minister Lukasz Szumowski said on state Radio 3.
While an official announcement has not been made, Deputy Prime Minister Jacek Sasin said the government is considering moving the vote to 17 or 23 May instead because of the bill on postal voting. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki also made that suggestion last week.
“May 10 is a difficult date to meet,” Sasin said on Radio Zet. “If the law takes effect May 7, it will not be possible to get the voting procedure ready.”
Logistical challenges raising questions about security
Poland lacks experience with widespread postal voting and the postal service would have to safely and promptly deliver more than 30 million items in the middle of a pandemic, and the authorities would have to make sure that the return boxes where voters deposit their ballots are secure. The postal service would have to safely and promptly deliver more than 30 million items in the middle of a pandemic, and the authorities would have to make sure that the return boxes where voters deposit their ballots are secure from tampering.
In the absence of sufficient oversight, this could open the door to fraud, such as the spoiling of ballots, as well as other problems, including family voting, where one member of a household delivers everyone’s votes, allowing them to pressure the others to vote a certain way. Already some ballot packages seemed to have disappeared, and ballots were seen strewn on a sidewalk in Warsaw, raising questions about the security of the vote and the capacity of the Polish Post to administer it.
The election preparations and expected turnout stand in stark contrast to a remarkable election in South Korea, where ⅔ of voters turned out to vote in person at polls that appeared to be meticulously prepared for a pandemic situation—with temperature checks, sanitizing stations and a very orderly process.
“Most people seemed to feel comfortable voting because of the government’s effective response to the pandemic,” wrote Catherine Kim for Vox news.
In Poland, that support trust and in the decision-makers is far, far lower. In polling only about 28 per cent of respondents said they would take part in the vote at all and according to a recent survey, 80 per cent of Poles want the election postponed.
Many have been calling for Poland to introduce a “state of emergency due to a natural disaster,” a formal legal regime that would force the ruling party to postpone the election. But Law and Justice has been refusing to do so, insisting on the May election date.
If the election goes ahead many plan to abstain and the biggest debate in Poland right now is not who to vote for in the upcoming election, but whether to vote at all. Some say they will not participate in what they see as a farce, others say that refusing to vote will only make things worse. The leading opposition candidate, Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska, openly called for a boycott, and made her campaign hashtag #OniWyboryMyŻycie, or #ThemElectionsUsLife.”
The Law and Justice party’s history of ignoring democracy
Since PiS came to power in 2015, it has hijacked the constitutional tribunal to replace judges with party loyalists and attempted to fire the head of the Supreme Court. The government has compromised the independence of common courts, with judges and prosecutors facing disciplinary proceedings and public shaming if they stand up for the rule of law and has been waging a war on independent journalists, civil society and human rights groups, activists, and others who criticise the government’s populist policies.