Why can’t it be done differently? Limited voter representation in provincial assemblies (sejmiki) in the period of 2014–2024

The problem of distorting the representativeness of elections to provincial assemblies in Poland is widely noted. The local government elections in 2024 confirm the indicated state of affairs. In many situations, the natural electoral threshold significantly exceeds the statutory threshold, and large groups of citizens do not have their representation in the sejmiks, while the largest groupings are overrepresented. The authors of this article set out to compare the number of voters without representation in provincial assemblies after the introduction of the Electoral Code, i.e. in the 2014, 2018 and 2024 local elections, despite having voted for groupings that exceeded the statutory electoral threshold. The authors, using institutional-legal analysis and classical systemic analysis, also propose a simple way to solve the pointed out significant problem for the representativeness of the elections, which is the abandonment of the division of provinces into smaller electoral districts.