There's a fight going on about the presidential election. It will last at least until Charles Nawrocki is sworn in as the fresh president – possibly longer. The question of whether a PiS candidate has been elected and appointed in accordance with the law, will proceed to be contested for a long time by part of the current power camp.
For the next fewer weeks, then, we will argue: whether the elections have been falsified and to what extent; whether the home of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs is decently considering the electoral protests and whether – as a body composed of neo jurisprudences – it has the right to do so at all; whether the protests should be taken over by a chamber composed of legally appointed SN judges. erstwhile – as can be expected – the home considers that Nawrocki was selected correctly, another dispute will arise: whether its ruling is final and what the Marshal of the Sejm should do in this situation. Call the National Assembly to take the oath from the president-elect? Or does he think we don't have a legally elected president to take over his duties?
The second would mean a constitutional and political crisis on an unprecedented scale in the 3rd Poland. Regardless of any reasonable uncertainty about the position of the Chamber of Control, this would be a question of the will that Poles expressed in the elections. Nawrocks are a terrible choice. He may be the worst president in the past of the 3rd Republic. But if the election was legal, the result must be respected.
However, it is worth asking: can any constructive conclusions be drawn for the future? Are there any voices questioning Nawrocki's election that point to real problems and can aid improve the electoral process?
Another installment of the regulation of law crisis
Before we answer, it is worth recalling that we are dealing with another installment of the regulation of law crisis that has been going on for years. It began erstwhile the Law and Justices brought alleged dubler judges into the Constitutional Court, and president Andrzej Duda took his oath from them under the cover of the night. The key problem present is not that any committee has miscalculated the votes – although specified cases should be investigated – but that we do not have an institution that would have assurance and could have impartially ruled that the elections were held in accordance with the law.
The PiS and outgoing president Andrzej Duda are liable for this state of affairs. They're the ones who infected the justice system, bringing in a new, politicized KRS and neojudges from its nomination. It was known for a long time that entrusting the validity of the elections of the Chamber of specified judges was a provision for a crisis. The ruling coalition attempted to remedy this with an incidental bill by Marshal Holown, but Duda vetoed it – arguing that it violates the President's prerogative to appoint judges and the rights of the judges themselves appointed from the nomination of the fresh KRS. So if the transfer of power is disrupted now, a large part of the blame will be borne by Duda.
Tales of "turned elections" besides hit susceptible ground due to the fact that memory of how PiS in 2020 tried to conduct correspondence elections during the pandemic is inactive alive. In that situation, they could not be organised legally and transparently. If Duda had been elected after the questionable post election, this could have resulted in an insurmountable crisis without military participation. This script was not only due to the rebellion and stubbornness of Jarosław Gowin, but we stopped in front of the wall at the last moment.
In the second circular of the election in 2025, it was the PiS MPs who were the first to turn the panic into social media, claiming that KO supporters voted respective times for certification. If Nawrocki had lost, we would surely have heard that "elections were rigged" – although specified a practice would be technically impossible.
Sow Maciaków, Wochów and Starosielków
Roman Gierty caused large amusement, declaring in a conversation with Monika Olejnik that election commissions had taken over the “kamrats” of the Law and the far right. Portal X flooded the videos with the biggest hits from the performances of Lizard and Ludwick, many of us most likely distracting from more urgent tasks. However, there is besides a rational question among Gierty's fantastic allegations: why can marginal political environments, which have not collected up to 100,000 signatures, delegate their representatives to election committees? What's the point of people from the Starosielc, Maciak or Woch committees counting votes?
Similarly with candidates who completely incomprehensiblely collected 100,000 signatures. In this election, we had a few. However, even if we consider that thanks to Starosielc, Jakubiak or Woch PiS had a disproportionate influence on the cast of the committee, the Polish strategy is fortunately so constructed that it does not give the anticipation to turn the election. The Commission is besides much and is filled with besides many different environments.
The problem, however, is not the low limit of signatures – but the deficiency of an effective verification mechanism. With individual data and PESEL, you can theoretically “produced” signatures. All you gotta do is make certain that not all of them are recorded in a single kind of writing, and that the people signed must be alive. PKW has no tools to see if the names on the lists are authentic. Yours could have been there without you knowing.
It may so be worth introducing mandatory signatures through a trusted profile – with a limit of 1 support per person. For confirmation you can add a transfer of 1 PLN to the candidate's campaign. This would make fraud difficult, although it would besides be more demanding – especially for the aged and digitally excluded. This would be a better solution than the present 1 anyway.
Why all the mistakes?
There are besides rational questions about the scale of erroneous results, greater than in 2020 or 2015. What could be the result? How do we reduce it? Were the commissions tired? Poorly trained? Did the computer strategy fail?
Instead of producing a communicative about the PiS game and compatriots, a well-designed state should look carefully at what did not work in the committees. Did the fatigue of committee members decide? If so, increase their membership. Did their training fail? Let's think about their shape. Or is there a problem in the IT system, for example, that the candidate's first consequence is first entered, not the 1 who won the highest number of votes?
Perhaps, as prof. Jarosław Flis proposed, it is worth introducing additional fuses into the system: for example, if a candidate in a given committee in the first circular gained more support than in the second round, then the committee gets a message that it is worth seeing if there has been a mistake.
A serious government would now deal with the first simplification of emotions, and second – would ask experts from management, organization and wellness at work, ergonomics, design, IT. It would work towards making mistakes and reasons for questioning the result of the elections as low as possible in the future.
That won't do you any good?
Even the best method solutions won't aid if people don't trust the election process. And they will not – due to the fact that each side considers the triumph of the another as an existential threat. And there's nothing to change that.
In healthy democracy, elections should not arouse emotion at this level. This is the effect of both dominant in the Polish organization policy – although PiS played a bigger function here. Unfortunately, even changing leaders and the power strategy does not warrant the healing of the system.
