Record number of Poles register to vote abroad, but face difficulties during pandemic

A record number of Polish citizens, over 385,000, have registered to vote abroad in this Sunday’s presidential election. Five years ago, the figure was around 250,000.

However, there remain concerns that, amid pandemic conditions, some voters may not be able to cast their ballot due to problems with the online registration system and delayed deliveries of postal ballots.

In Poland and 53 other countries, the elections on 28 June will be held under a hybrid arrangement that allows voters to cast their ballot either in person or by post. In 14 countries, Poles will only be able to vote in person.

But in 21 countries, in-person voting has not been deemed possible by local authorities, meaning only postal voting is permitted. These include the countries with the largest numbers of Poles registered to vote abroad: the UK, Germany, US, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway and France.

In six countries – Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Kuwait, Afghanistan and North Korea – Poles will not be able to vote at all, due to local restrictions on movement and suspension of postal services, reports TVN24. The foreign ministry recommended that Poles wishing to vote in those countries should, if possible, go to another country to register.

At a press conference last week, deputy foreign minister Piotr Wawrzyk noted that “the method of voting which is permissible in a given country, or whether we can conduct elections there at all, is not up to the Polish minister of foreign affairs.”

In the UK, around 130,000 Poles have registered to vote. This is almost twice as many as in the previous presidential elections in 2015, and 30,000 more than for last year’s parliamentary vote.

“The number of Poles voting in the UK has been going up for a few years now and that’s down to a number of reasons,” Jakub Krupa, a London-based journalist, told Notes from Poland

“Many people are considering their options after Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic and they want to take part in the election in case they decided to go back to Poland,” according to Krupa.

“On top of that there’s a bonus coming from the fact that postal vote is just so much easier: usually, there’d about 50 polling stations across the UK, but no option of a postal vote, so voting would involve an often long trip to the nearest polling station or a consulate,” he adds.

“This year, due to the pandemic, everyone can fairly easily register from their mobile or desktop and then just vote via Royal Mail.”

Despite record numbers of voters registering this year, some have reported difficulties with the two-step online registration, which closed on 16 June.

“A lot of people did not receive their confirmation emails and have faced significant technical difficulties with the registration system,” says Kaja Marczewska, who lives in London. “No phone support was provided, and the embassy has not been replying to emails with inquiries about the issue.”

Some voters worry that they will not have sufficient time to send back their votes, with ballots being mailed out by Monday at the latest and having to be returned by Friday (posted at the voter’s own cost).

“While probably still manageable for smaller Polonia communities, the UK is a peculiar case as the record-high number of voters and a particularly bad disruption to the way Royal Mail works make it really tricky to run the election in a normal way,” says Krupa.

“There are fears that many people – maybe even thousands – may not get their polling cards on time to send them back before the deadline,” he adds.

Responding to these concerns, the Polish Embassy in London today announced that it will extend its deadline for collecting postal ballots from Friday to 9pm on Sunday, the same day that the vote is taking place in Poland.

Approached for comment, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Notes from Poland that “Polish consular services have done their best to prepare and send ballot packs to voters as soon as possible” and confirmed that Polish diplomatic missions “sent ballot packs within the statutory deadline, that is by 22 June 2020.”

“The missions that had the largest number of packs to prepare (from a dozen or so thousand to several dozen thousand packs) sent them in several rounds,” adds the ministry spokesperson.

The Polish Embassy in London did not respond to questions submitted by Notes from Poland.

“Officials seem to be trying their best to deal with an impossible situation of meeting a set of extremely short deadlines while dealing with an untested system of mass postal voting in the middle of a global pandemic,” adds Krupa.

“Normally they would rely on a support network of Polish organisations across the UK, including community centres and churches, which help them run local polling stations,” according to Krupa.

Elsewhere, such as in Belgium, while some voters had already voted, others are yet to receive their postal ballots, reports RMF FM. The Polish Embassy in Brussels has responded by saying that “electoral ballots are sent out in batches”, which may account for different dates of delivery.

There has been some confusion around divergent rules being adopted by Polish diplomatic outposts in different countries. In Germany, the Polish Embassy announced its deadline for postal ballots as Saturday, since postal services do not work on Sundays, reports Onet.

Former Polish ambassador to the US, Ryszard Schnepf, said that “it looks as though there is a fear that these 300,000 votes could be decisive.” He and 31 other ambassadors have issued an open letter outlining the concerns with Poles living abroad having trouble voting, reports TVN24.

“Organisations for Poles living around the world are raising the alarm that the difficulties are gigantic: the registration system works badly, instructions on websites are misleading, embassy and consular hotlines do not work,” reads the letter, published in mid-June.

The deadline to register for the potential second round of the elections, which will take place on 12 July if none of the candidates receive a majority of votes in the first round, will also be tight – lapsing a day after the first round, on 29 June, before the run-off is even confirmed.

With polls predicting a very tight race between President Andrzej Duda and his main challengers in a potential second-round run-off, overseas votes could prove decisive.

Main image credits: Oxyman/Wikipedia (under CC BY-SA 3.0)

Maria Wilczek

Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.