Basic principles of electoral law in the Polish People’s Republic and the Third Polish Republic

This article presents a comparison of the principles of electoral law in the Polish People’s Republic and the Third Polish Republic: political deliberations pertaining to elections in a democratic system and an undemocratic (authoritarian) system. In theory, there were not major differences between the two. The paper does not analyse the very practice of elections.

The Evolution of the Basic Principles of Electoral Law in Elections to Constitutive Organs of the Units of Local Government and Parliamentary Elections in Poland Since 1989

 The scope of this article is to show the evolution of the basic principles of electoral law in elections to constitutive organs of the units of local government and parliamentary elections in Poland since 1989. In the article it is shown the constitutional and statutory regulations concerning basic principles of electoral law and the methods of determining the elections results applicable in Poland in past thirty years, from the Sejm and the Senat Electoral Acts of 1989, to the Electoral Code of 2011 (amended in 2018). According to the author of this article, this evolution of rules results in establish two models of regulations of the principles of electoral law and electoral system. The first model is applicable in elections to Sejm, to voivodeships councils, to county councils and to municipal councils in “big” municipalities (more than 20.000 citizens), the second model is applicable in elections to Senat and to municipal councils in “small” municipalities (less than 20.000 citizens).