Where the postmen fear a mail-in vote

May 10: Poland Presidential Elections

Since publication of this article, Poland’s elections have been postponed. No new date has been set.

In the last few weeks, Polish streets have been mostly cleared of pedestrians. Only dog walkers steal a hasty stroll around their apartment blocks. Masked policemen soak up the morning sun on street corners. Postmen hurry to work as usual. Overnight, these letter carriers have unexpectedly been appointed the custodians of Poland's upcoming presidential elections scheduled for May 10. Rather than call off the upcoming vote, as other countries have done, the Polish government wants to hold its elections by mail.

Poland’s conservative ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), which has consolidated power across all branches of government in recent years, has refused to back away from the May elections date despite the pandemic. Critics contend that the party is pushing for a quick vote to capitalize on good polling numbers since the outbreak of the pandemic, even if it risks public health and makes a farce of free and fair elections. The government has defended the decision as a constitutional obligation, and has cited a successful all-postal vote in the German state of Bavaria in late March as an example.

This is where the trouble begins: Poland has no experience with postal votes, and just over a week left to organize one. Little of the infrastructure is yet in place. The postal-elections bill, passed through the lower house of parliament on April 6, is now in the Senate. The upper house may stall, but not stop, its passage until up to four days before the vote.

Official preparations can only legally begin once the bill passes into law, although the government has already ordered the printing of voting cards. Yet even the proposed bill contains many loose ends. So far, the plan involves all voters receiving a ballot to their mailbox, which they then place in special voting postal boxes between 6 a.m. and 8.p.m. on the day of the elections. How these special boxes would be set-up and supervised, as well as how votes would then be rounded-up, remains unclear.

Postmen are understandably confused. “No one has officially told us if these elections are going ahead,” said Karol, a postal worker who requested that only his first name be used in this article and that the city he works in not be revealed, either. Karol delivers letters in an affluent neighborhood. For almost a decade he has knocked on the same 650 doors. Throughout the coronavirus lockdown, he has done his job as usual: “Lately my bag’s been a little lighter, though.”

One apparent problem are mailboxes where ballot cannot be delivered. Karol said that a number of unofficial requests have filtered down to his station, to help identify such addresses: “Please report the number of overflowing mailboxes;” “report mailboxes which don’t close;” “report mailboxes which are too small to fit a package.”

He has duly complied, and told me that if the elections go ahead, he would expect compensation for his “new responsibilities as an electoral commissar.”

Most other postmen are less sold on the idea. Remik, who also requested that his last name and city not be included in this article, oversees the postboxes of 1,500 tightly-packed apartments. At his postal office, the general feeling about the government’s push for the elections is, in his words, that “they’ve gone fucking mad.” 

He listed a number of other issues. First, many people do not actually live at their postal addresses. Second, there is no way of checking whether a voting pack gets to the designated voter. Third, those currently in quarantine (some 86,000 Poles) are not even allowed to leave their home to walk down to their postbox. 

An unofficial instruction from the postal service's internal network, which was shown to me, says that postmen should deliver the ballot “as a regular letter.” It has been suggested that in cases of missing mailboxes, the voting pack can be slipped in through the fence.

Remik also worries about the safety of older voters: “When I pass by the doors of elderly people, I have this vision that in a month’s time I’ll be walking amongst obituaries.” He is likely to call in sick on the day of the election, he said. “My friend is already on leave, and I tend to agree that it is the best course of action. I do not want to have any part in these elections.” 

Another issue arises for the 314,000 Poles living abroad who participated in the 2019 parliamentary elections, who this time around might effectively be disenfranchised. On such a tight schedule, most of these voters are unlikely to be mailed their ballots on time, and may have trouble dropping them off at Polish diplomatic missions abroad. The countries with some of the largest Polish diasporas – the US, UK and Germany – have not permitted the organization of voting on their territory, and several have restrictions on movement in place. A document from the Polish foreign ministry admitted that “elections in some countries will be very difficult and, in many cases, impossible.”

Worryingly, the government’s last-minute change to allow a universal postal vote could also turn out to be illegal. Poland’s constitution does not permit changing the electoral code in the six-month run-up to elections, so as to avoid rewriting the rules of the game during play. For this reason, a majority of Poles (56%) said they will boycott the vote, according to a recent survey by the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWPS) in Warsaw.  

Moreover, the government’s push to begin preparations without the postal bill being ratified – including giving the postal services (not yet an electoral administrative body) access to Poland's population register, which contains data of all citizens – have been called a “flagrant violation of the law” in an expert legal report commissioned in parliament.

Doubts about how safe and democratic the election will be have been raised by Poland’s own Electoral Commission, the Head of the Supreme Court, its Commissioner for Human Rights, the OSCE and the EU. 

The rally ‘round the flag effect of the pandemic has pushed the incumbent president and favorite to win, PiS’s Andrzej Duda, above the 50% mark in opinion polls. A higher than 50% result would give Duda an outright win in the first round of elections and preclude the need for a second-round run-off between the two top candidates.

This would mean a second five-year term for the president who in recent years has been known to rubber-stamp most of the government’s controversial proposals. These have included fulfilling the Law and Justice Party’s generous electoral social welfare promises such as universal monthly child benefits of 500 zloty ($120) per child, increased public pensions, and a lower retirement age. It has also meant passing laws which have subjugated Poland’s courts system to political control, setting off a long-running dispute with the European Union.

An opposition president, on the other hand, could veto legislation pushed through the Law and Justice-controlled parliament. This would bring back checks and balances on parliament, which was re-elected for another four-year term in late 2019.

But the opposition candidates are trailing far behind. In a recent poll by Kantar, 59% of those planning to vote say they support the Law and Justice-backed incumbent. Tied for second place were independent candidate Szymon Hołownia and Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz of the agrarian PSL party, each with 7%.

In joint third place, with 5% support, came Krzysztof Bosak of the far-right Confederation and the united left’s candidate Robert Biedroń. The candidate of backed by the main opposition grouping Civic Coalition (KO) Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska, who started out as favorite to challenge Duda, but has called the elections “criminal” and asked her supporters to boycott, came last with only 4%.

Throughout this year’s unusual campaign, opposition parties have faced an uphill battle. The official presidential campaign period started in early February, just as the coronavirus began its march across Europe. Poland was one of Europe’s first countries to introduce a total lockdown, banning international rail travel and flights on March 15, shutting schools a day later, and introducing restrictions on leaving homes from March 25.

Strict restrictions hobbled all campaigns, as candidates were forced to move all of their events online. The centrist and pro-European opposition candidate, Kidawa-Błońska, was quick to suspend her campaign in March. On Wednesday her party said she would “not participate” if the vote goes ahead on May 10. Her voters, asked to boycott the vote, are now torn: if they do so, their candidate is sure to lose; but if they turn out to vote, they legitimize the government’s electoral folly.

Other candidates have chosen different paths. The independent candidate Szymon Hołownia, a former journalist who has styled himself as “somebody from the outside,” has said that a boycott would amount to a loss of civil rights. Instead of boycotting, he has sued the Polish state for denying him his electoral right to campaign fully during the official period, claiming that the elections will be unfair as a result. A banner saying “Przełożyć Wybory” (Move the Elections), with “żyć” (“to live”) in blood red flaps from his Warsaw balcony. 

Candidates and opposition parties have been seeking ways to trigger the mechanism through which the elections could legally be delayed: a constitutional state of emergency. Once declared, elections are automatically postponed until at least three months after it is recalled. 

Hołownia has also launched an initiative “Uwolnić Wybory” (Free the Elections) encouraging citizens to petition the government to introduce a state of natural disaster and postpone the elections. Meanwhile the main parliamentary opposition, Civic Coalition (KO), has sought to bring this about through a set of amendments to the postal-voting bill currently in the Senate, which could pass through parliament if the group is able to receive sufficient backing from the Law and Justice Party’s junior coalition partner.

But Law and Justice will put up a fight. While the polls now have Duda strides ahead of others, as months of economic lockdown begin to bite - with businesses closing and workers being laid off - the public may lose their sympathies for the governing party and its presidential ally.

On Wednesday, Polish prime Minister Morawiecki hinted that the election could be bumped to May 17 or 23, which is permitted by the postal voting bill. “We will make a decision in good time,” he added, eleven days before the scheduled vote.

If the elections go ahead as planned, the next four years of Polish politics will be overcast by a vote which already looks irresponsible and unfair. The mandate of the winner will constantly be called into question. That will be most unfortunate at a time when Poland should be coming together to pick up the wreckage of the pandemic.