APPolen goes to the polls for parliamentary elections
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 07:18
Charlotte Waaijers
correspondent Central Europe
Charlotte Waaijers
correspondent Central Europe
Today Poland is experiencing the denouement of a long and fierce election campaign: almost 30 million Poles can vote today. Polls indicate a neck-and-neck race between the government and the opposition and that is why every vote is being fought for.
The very last battle will be fought today at the polling station. There, both the government and the opposition are still trying to manipulate the electoral system to their own advantage.
Rise in rural areas
Municipal secretary Angelika Pasek-Gilarska pushes open the door of an abandoned fire station in Łochów, a small municipality in eastern Poland. In the middle of an empty room is a brand new transparent box of more than one meter high. “This is where the votes will go in soon,” she says.
The barracks is one of seven new polling stations in the municipality. Smaller towns throughout Poland have also been given their own electoral district this time. This means that people do not have to travel as far, and today even buses are used for those who have difficulty walking.
It is an initiative of the Polish government, intended to increase the low turnout in rural areas. The ruling party PiS itself will probably benefit from this: because the party has more support among the elderly and in rural areas, this can give them extra votes.
Mirosław Gołaszewski, mayor of Łochów on behalf of PiS, does not think this is unfair. “If it stays within the framework of the law and encourages people to vote, it is positive. That is how democracy works.” Moreover: “The other political side also has all kinds of means to encourage supporters.”
The main challenger to the conservative ruling party PiS of Prime Minister Morawiecki and party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski today is the liberal Civic Platform. That party is led by Donald Tusk, former Prime Minister and President of the European Council.
The opposition is indeed not standing still, although that also seems to be born out of necessity. “I am trying to use everything I can within our electoral law to reverse the injustice in the system,” says economist Michał Majewski.
By “injustice” he refers to the fact that not every vote carries the same weight everywhere. Seats are divided among districts and are won by the party that receives the most votes in the district.
But fewer and fewer people live in the countryside, and more in the cities. Yet the current government has not adjusted the districts.
“To earn a seat in Warsaw this election you need to get about 85,000 votes, while for the same seat in the constituency just down the road you only need about 35,000 votes,” Majewski said. The government, which therefore has more support in the countryside, can get a seat with fewer votes. While votes for the opposition will be ‘lost’ more often in the cities.
And so Majewski and others built a website where you can find out where your voice is likely to have more influence. The hope is that today thousands of Poles from progressive cities, where the opposition wins anyway, will vote in another district, so that the opposition can win additional seats. In the Polish media they have already been renamed ‘voting tourists’.
Counting becomes a tough job
There are other issues affecting voting today. Poles can also vote on four very different questions that are presented to them in a referendum. According to critics, this is also mainly a trick by the ruling party PiS to win more votes.
And then there are Poles abroad, who are more often in favor of the opposition, who are allowed to vote. This time more than 600,000, a record. So much so that there are reports that polling stations abroad are becoming too crowded. Poles in the Netherlands would be advised to go to Belgium or Germany.
All those votes must be counted within 24 hours, at the same time as all votes added as a result of the referendum. The opposition wonders whether that will work.
The polling stations close at 9 p.m. It is expected that it may take some time before it is clear how all votes have been distributed.
2023-10-15 05:18:46
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