The Elderly and their issues in the selected electoral pleas in 2018

In the last 25 years Polish society’s aging process has been intensified what caused a constant growth of the number of people in the age 65 and more. Furthermore, according to demographic prognosis, the share of this age group will be rising in the next years, as well as the role of “silver” electorate. In the local governments selections in 2018 the Elderly were perceived as an important electorate group. Their problems were not ignored and political groups noticed the necessity of winning this group round. In campaigns and election programs candidates focused on the seniors’ needs. The main propositions dealt with safety and health issues, as well as concerns regarding institutional solutions targeted for this group specifically. It can be said the Elderly became one of the most desirable voters next to the Young on Polish political scene.

Gloss to the Judgment of the Court of Justice 9 June 2022, EP v Préfet du Gers and Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques (INSEE), C-673/20

The commented judgment was formed by the Court of Justice in the term of preliminary ruling, which was asked in the argument between a United Kingdom national who had been resident in France since 1984. As a result of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, the applicant was deprived of her right to vote in European Parliament elections and in municipal elections in their Member State of residence during that period. The issue in dispute concerns citizenship of the European Union and the rights associated with it, including electoral rights. The Court of Justice has unequivocally recognised that when a Member State withdraw from the European Union, its citizens lose their status as citizens of the Union and any privileges attached to it.

Candidates of the Civic Platform of The Republic of Poland for mayors of cities in Western Pomerania. „Election locomotives” or beneficiaries of the party label?

The article concerns candidates for city mayors in the 2002-2018 elections in West Pomerania. It aims to analyse which of the contenders played the role of so-called locomotives in the city council elections and which owed their result to the banner of the committee/party from which they ran. The Civic Platform of the Republic of Poland was examined. It was examined whether the candidate for the president enjoyed greater support among voters, or whether candidates from the committee to the city council received more votes in total. How many won the presidential seat? Did presidential candidates also compete for a mandate on the city council and were they successful? What share did they have in the votes won by a given list? This made it possible to see whether the decisions of the Civic Platform’s leadership, in terms of choosing a presidential candidate, were beneficial to the party.

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.