Abstract

For elections to be recognised as the major criterion which allows to assess a given system as a democratic one specific criteria have to be met. Thus, elections need to be held at regular intervals, basing on the free competition of political parties and civic groups, respecting the legal regulations ensuring that the course of the elections is fair, including respect for the elementary rules of the electoral law, whin in particular include the following: the rule of universality, equality, directness, secret ballot, but also the rule of free and fair elections. Only the meeting of those rules in the broadly conceived electoral process makes it possible to recognise a given electoral system as constituting a measure of the democratic rule of law. On the other hand, if the fundamental rules of the electoral law are not realised, elections cannot be considered democratic. Likewise, an electoral process deprived of a real possibility to be protested by its participants, expressing their dissatisfaction with the events that have taken place in its course and without the guarantee that the protests are considered by an independent institution, can hardly be called democratic. These are actually one of the major guarantees of a democratic electoral process. That is why its seems so important to analyse and persistently remind the issues connected with electoral protests, their essence, their significance for the electoral process, for legitimisation of thus elected authorities, including the doubts as to the permissible grounds for those “electoral complaints”, which is exactly what this article deals with. It also refers to the data, information, position of state authorities as regards electoral protests and the very protests filed after the 2019 elections to the Sejm and the Senate of the Republic of Poland. The issues that have been raised gain additional weight if we assume that the number of protests filed after the elections constitutes a measure, an indicator of the quality of the electoral law, preparation of the electoral campaign, as well as the “attachment” to and respect for the provisions of that law by both the entities acting thereunder and the voters who are beneficiaries of those activities and expressing their assessment of the compliance of those activities with the law in the protests they file. The sense that the elections have been held in a free and fair manner consolidates the level of citizens’ trust in democratic institutions. It also seems legitimate to claim that electoral protests can be perceived not only as an objection against violation of the lawfulness of the electoral process, but more broadly as a manifestation of legal awareness of citizens and the level of legal culture of a civil society.