On Thursday, the Senate approved a draft amendment to the electoral law, which extends the time for delivering the protocols to the country of voting for districts abroad during parliamentary, presidential and European parliament elections from 24 to 48 hours.
48 hours
55 senators voted to approve the bill with amendments, 40 opposed, no one abstained. The Senate passed a resolution to present this draft to the Sejm. Senator Kazimierz Michał Ujazdowski will represent the House in further work on this Senate initiative.
A group of senators has introduced a bill to amend the Electoral Act. The draft is based on the deletion of paragraph 2 from art. 230 of the Electoral Act and thus the time limit for counting votes in foreign polling stations.
During the work on the draft, amendments were tabled. One of them assumed that Art. 230 of the Electoral Act, the time limit of “24 hours” is replaced by “72 hours”. The second amendment was to change it to “48 hours”. In a vote, the senators rejected the first amendment and approved the second.
Under current regulations, voting in these wards is deemed not to have taken place if the Electoral Commission of the relevant constituency does not obtain the result of the vote in polling stations abroad or on Polish seagoing vessels within 24 hours after the end of voting.
As announced in the CIS release, the draft amendment to the electoral law extends the time to deliver the protocols of voting abroad during parliamentary, presidential and European Parliament elections from 24 to 48 hours.
Currently, in accordance with the provision of § 2 in Art. 230 of the Electoral Law, if the Electoral Commission of the relevant constituency fails to obtain the result of the vote in polling stations abroad or on Polish ships within 24 hours after the end of voting, the vote in these constituencies shall be deemed not to have taken place. This means that electoral commissions abroad must deliver the voting report to Poland within 24 hours after the end of voting. The Senate wants to double that time
it was written.
According to the senators, this change will remove the risk of a situation where a valid vote of a Polish citizen abroad is not taken into account for reasons completely beyond his control and related only to the functioning of the electoral administration. It will also help to better protect the constitutional guarantee of the exercise of the right to vote
we are reading.
Electoral law
In early March, the Sejm did not support the Senate’s resolution to reject the electoral law amendment. The amendment, intended by its authors, PiS deputies, is to increase access to polling places for residents of small towns and increase voter turnout.
At the end of April, a group of senators introduced a legislative initiative related to the position of the human rights commissioner, which argued that the provisions of the electoral law limit the constitutional rights of Poles living abroad.
The purpose of the draft submitted by a group of senators was to repeal § 2 in Art. 230 of the Electoral Act, which obliges electoral commissions abroad to deliver the voting report to the country within 24 hours. The drafters stated that their intention was to exclude the risk of a situation where a valid vote of a Polish citizen abroad would not be taken into account for reasons completely beyond his control and related only to the functioning of the election administration.
READ ALSO: Important decisions! President Andrzej Duda signed the amendment to the electoral law and the windmill law
olk/PAP
Source: wPolityce