Polish Ballot Manipulation Tussle Points to Acrimonious Election

Wojciech Moskwa and Natalia Ojewska
·3 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Ten months before an election that may dislodge Poland’s nationalist ruling party, accusations of vote manipulation are setting the tone for what may be an acrimonious contest.

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Ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has called for changes that would make ballot “manipulation and forgery” more difficult, such as having party faithful at every polling station. Now the opposition says it’s gearing up by mobilizing 54,000 volunteers to monitor the vote.

Tomasz Grodzki, the highest-ranking opposition figure as the speaker of Poland’s upper house, said the “army” of monitors will keep tabs on any irregularities when voters cast ballots in October 2023. He cited the 2020 presidential election accusations over an untested and ultimately abandoned vote-by-mail process as enough to warrant scrutiny.

“With so many sins on their conscience, the ruling party is doing a lot — if not everything — to ensure that the ballot turns out as they want,” Grodzki, the marshal of the Polish Senate, said in an interview in Warsaw. “These aren’t hypothetical risks.”

The ruling Law & Justice party denied the claim.

“When they win the election, they claim that all the democratic standards were upheld,” party lawmaker Radoslaw Fogiel told Bloomberg. “But when they lose, they question the results.”

Duda’s 2020 Win

Poland’s National Electoral Commission has said that the number of reported incidents in the 2020 election wasn’t enough to affect the result, a victory for President Andrzej Duda.

But the barbed claims of ballot irregularities underscore what’s at stake in next year’s parliamentary election. Polls show that Law & Justice may lose its grip on power after two terms in office, as surging inflation and the region’s cost-of-living crisis eat into voter support.

As Grodzki outlined the opposition’s plans to monitor ballots, Kaczynski has floated a strategy to set up more polling stations, especially in sparsely-populated rural areas, where the support for the ruling party is the strongest.

Law & Justice still leads the opposition Civic Platform, polling at 33% to 26% in a Dec. 8 survey from from pollster IBRiS. But the ruling party could fall short of a majority with likely allies against the combined votes of the opposition parties, which may include Polska 2050, the Polish Peasants Party and the Left.

In seven years in power, Law & Justice has been accused of overseeing an erosion of Poland’s democratic institutions and transforming the nation of 38 million from a model of European integration after the collapse of communism to a problem child for authorities in Brussels.

Politics ‘Can Eclipse’ Rule of Law

Under Kaczynski’s leadership, the ruling party has increased political sway over the judiciary, leading to a €1 million ($1.1 million)-a-day fine from the EU’s top court. The government has also wrested control over public television and tightened oversight of local media.

The EU is effectively refusing to pay out €35.4 billion in post-pandemic aid earmarked for Poland unless the government rolls back some of its contested changes in the justice system, an issue Warsaw is now trying to resolve.

Thirteen non-governmental organizations last month asked the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a multinational group that monitors elections and human rights, to scrutinize the Polish election as well as political campaigns.

Szymon Osowski, the head of the Citizens Network Watchdog Poland, which signed the letter to the OSCE, said that the 2020 ballot showed that political interests “can eclipse rule of law.” But rather than irregularities at the polls, the erosion of institutions and media control deserved scrutiny.

“We’re less concerned about vote counting and more about everything that comes before this,” Osowski said. “From government pressure on independent institutions and local administrations to public media campaigns and unclear legal aspects.”

--With assistance from Piotr Skolimowski.

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