President Andrzej Duda signed the amendment to the electoral law, as well as the windmill law, presidential minister Małgorzata Paprocka told PAP.
Electoral law
Last Thursday, the Sejm supported the Senate’s resolution not to reject the electoral law amendment, sending the amendment to the president’s office. On Tuesday, KPRP minister Małgorzata Paprocka told the PAP that Andrzej Duda had signed the amendment to the electoral law.
Among other things, the amendment to the Electoral Act assumes better access to polling stations for residents of small towns. According to the amendment, the mayor of a rural or rural-urban municipality must provide free passenger transportation in the form of public transportation “to vote for voters on the electoral roll at a permanent polling station in the area of a particular municipality, if there is no public collective transport on election day or if the nearest communication stop of functioning collective transport is more than 1.5 km from the polling station.
Under the new regulations, a disabled voter with a severe or moderate disability and a voter who reaches the age of 60 at the latest on the day of the vote are entitled to free transportation from their place of residence to the polling station designated for the polling station.
One of the changes is based on the “revision and distribution” of the already existing voting districts. As a result of the changes – as stated in the justification – “the estimated number of new district committees is approximately 6,000”. According to the PKW website, the number of districts, including foreign ones, exceeded 27.5 thousand in the 2019 parliamentary elections.
The amendment also includes provisions passed in the Sejm as PiS amendments regarding the recording of the work of the constituency election commission by trustees using their own recording devices. Until now, in accordance with the Electoral Act, shop stewards could record the activities of the committee until the start of voting, ie – checking whether the ballot box is empty, closing and sealing the ballot box, and checking whether there is a list of voters and the required number of ballot papers. After that, they could only record the work of the committee from the closing of the polling station to the signing of the protocol.
The provision adopted by the amendment assumes that the activities of the constituency election committee can be recorded by the stewards from the moment the committee takes the first actions until the protocol is signed – including during the vote.
The amendment establishes the Central Electoral Register, which will be used to determine the number of voters, compile electoral lists and lists of persons entitled to participate in the referendum and check whether they have the right to vote.
The Sejm approved the amendment in late January. In late February, the Senate passed a resolution rejecting the amendment. During the debate in the Senate, the rapporteur of the joint Senate committees, Krzysztof Kwiatkowski (circle of independent senators), indicated, among other things, that the committees had taken note of the views of constitutionalists on the amendment and that all were negative about the amendment. He added that the so-called “legislative silence”, ie no changes to the electoral law in the short time before the elections. The Sejm did not agree with the Senate’s motion to reject the amendment to the Electoral Act.
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Source: wPolityce