Anger as overseas polling staff “imprisoned” for hours awaiting confirmation from Warsaw

There were widespread problems with the submission of votes from overseas polling stations in Poland’s parliamentary elections. Some electoral staff were forced to remain at polling stations for two days waiting for the National Electoral Commission (PKW) in Warsaw to confirm receipt of their results.

One electoral committee in Edinburgh, Scotland (pictured above) posted a picture showing themselves still at the polling station 37 hours after they had first arrived. They described themselves as “hostages” who had been “imprisoned” by the PKW.

Some overseas committees reportedly gave up waiting for the PKW to confirm acceptance of their submitted results and decided to go home, despite the risk that it could mean their results not being accepted.

Polling station workers in Edinburgh have been in place for 37 hours because of the incompetence of the Polish National Electoral Commission, which has still not ratified its protocols. Shameful. https://t.co/QlSDFs6xyO

— Ben Stanley (@BDStanley) October 16, 2023

This year saw a record 608,000 Polish citizens register to vote abroad in Sunday’s elections, almost twice as many as four years ago. That had led to concerns that overseas polling stations would be overwhelmed and would struggle to count all their votes within the 24-hour deadline.

However, yesterday an apparently different problem emerged. Polish media reported that a number of overseas electoral committees, including in Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, as well as the UK, had submitted their results on Monday morning but then spent hours waiting for the PKW to confirm acceptance of them.

Under electoral rules, the committee must remain at the polling station until the results are accepted. That meant polling staff, who had already been working for over 24 hours, were prevented from going home.

„I’ve never been so happy to stand in a queue.”

A record number of Poles abroad voted in yesterday’s election, with long lines at polling stations

We spoke to voters in the Netherlands, among whom a desire to change Poland’s government was a common theme https://t.co/gOiQ4tRhAj

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) October 16, 2023

Agnieszka Glapa, the head of an electoral committee in Berlin, told news website Onet that they had submitted their results at 7:12 a.m. on Monday morning. But, nine hours later, they had still not received confirmation of their acceptance, nor any communication at all from the PKW.

“We’re now sleeping on the floor,” she said. “Our committee is already running on fumes. We spent all of Sunday at the polling station and then counting votes. We had over 6,000 ballots, we are not robots, and we are still uncertain whether the PKW will approve or reject our documents.”

A member of a committee in Milan told broadcaster RMF that they had been working for over 38 hours before finally being able to go home on Monday evening. Despite finishing counting votes before 6 a.m. on Monday morning, they then had to wait hours for acceptance by the PKW.

RMF journalist Paweł Żuchowski received information from some overseas committees, including one in Sheffield, that members had decided to go home instead of continuing to wait for confirmation from the PKW.

Mediolan, członkowie komisji poszli już do domu.

„Dzień dobry Panie Pawle,
Bylem członkiem komisji 417 w Mediolanie. Członkowie komisji w pracy przez ponad 38 godzin. Zakończenie liczenia nad ranem (5.00-6.00) w poniedziałek, następnie od 8.00 odrzucanie i oczekiwanie na… pic.twitter.com/QBFMVLoB1R

— Paweł Żuchowski (@p_zuchowski) October 16, 2023

The head of the PKW, Sylwester Marciniak, addressed the issue at a press conference on Monday evening. He noted that the problems stemmed from the fact that all overseas votes are counted towards one electoral district in Warsaw.

While that has always been the case, this year there are a record number of electoral committees abroad, he noted – 420 in total, up from 320 at the last elections.

“We intervened,” said Marciniak, quoted by Onet. “I personally talked to the chairman of the district electoral commission [in Warsaw] and [the process] was accelerated a bit…But there is still a lot of work left… There is still a problem with several commissions in Ireland, Germany and Great Britain.”

He also noted that often the documents that are submitted by committees do not meet all requirements and therefore must be sent back for corrections.

It is “certain” that some overseas votes in Sunday’s elections will not be counted before the deadline to submit them, says the foreign ministry spokesman

A record number of Poles abroad will vote. In previous elections, most have supported the opposition https://t.co/5bR7EP3JbS

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) October 13, 2023

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Main image credit: Maciej Dokurno/Twitter

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.