Almost 100,000 Poles have volunteered to monitor elections, says opposition leader Tusk

Nearly 100,000 people have volunteered to monitor Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Poland and ensure that they are conducted fairly, says opposition leader Donald Tusk. A recent poll showed that over 40% of the public – and 69% of opposition voters – fear the election results will be falsified.

Such concerns have been stoked by Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO), which says the government is willing to violate democratic norms to ensure it remains in power. However, the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has accused the opposition of wanting to stoke civil unrest by questioning the results if they lose.

“They are prepared to do all sorts of bad things,” said Tusk at a rally in the town of Chrzanów today. “This government breaks all the boundaries of cynicism and selfishness, but they always retreat when they see strength.”

“Today we are strong, thanks to you because you decided to take matters into your own hands and monitor these elections,” he continued. “Almost 100,000 have volunteered…It is thanks to you that they will not concoct anything.”

At Sunday’s elections, Poles can vote in just over 31,000 polling stations which are staffed by more than 258,000 electoral commission members, who are paid volunteers. Their work will be overseen by representatives of the political parties running in the elections.

Additionally, citizens can volunteer with NGOs to monitor the elections. Each NGO whose statutory objectives include “concern for democracy, civil rights and the development of civil society” can nominate one civic observer for each election commission.

The unpaid volunteers are tasked with monitoring the work of the committees and catching violations of the law, such as failings in ensuring the secrecy of the ballot, protecting the ballot box and properly counting votes. They can be present during all committee activities and have the right to record them.

At least 27,000 people joined the Civic Election Oversight (Obywatelska Kontrola Wyborów) campaign organised by the opposition-friendly Committee for the Defence of Democracy (KOD).

“During previous elections, we had civic observers in 10% of the election commissions in Poland,” said Nathalie Bolgert from the campaign in an interview on Facebook with Watchdog Polska, a civic oversight group.

“So now there was this crazy idea to have an observer in absolutely every election commission,” she added. “As a result, this whole action has become gigantic.”

In January, a poll by United Surveys for the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna newspaper and broadcaster RMF FM found that 47.3% feared this year’s election results could be falsified while 48.3% said they were not concerned.

An IBRiS poll for Radio Zet conducted last week found that 41.2% fear the elections could be falsified while 55% do not. However, among opposition voters 69% expressed such concern while only 9% of the ruling party’s supporters did so.

Nevertheless, PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński has also voiced concern about the elections. Last year he announced plans to create an “army” of volunteers to “protect elections” from attempts by the opposition to disrupt them and dispute the results

Kaczyński repeated his calls for the creation of an “election protection corps” in July this year.

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Main image credit: Wybory bez picu / Facebook

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.