Polish Electoral System to the European Parliament: Drawbacks and Alternatives
- Institution: Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu
- ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4920-439X
- Year of publication: 2019
- Source: Show
- Pages: 109-124
- DOI Address: https://doi.org/10.15804/ppk.2019.05.08
- PDF: ppk/51/ppk5108.pdf
The Polish electoral system to the European Parliament has been criticized for as long as it has been in operation; that is, uninterruptedly since 2004. The commonest objections and criticisms concern the lack of the fixed assignment of seats to territorial districts; significant and unjustified differences in population size among districts; risk of not winning a single seat by the smallest districts; unequal territorial representation; overcomplicated and unclear mechanism of translating votes into seats and in consequence creation of an illusion of a territorial representation. However, there are at least four alternative electoral systems which are able to eliminate all the drawbacks of the current model while warranting the proportional seat distribution both among electoral districts in accordance with the principle of material equality of each vote and among election committees pursuant to the requirements set for the electoral systems of the member countries by the European Union law. The aim of the paper is to compare these alternatives with the current model, pinpoint the drawbacks and advantages of each solution and indicate which criteria are optimized by the respective electoral systems.