Poland's political establishment clashes over election results as recount shows irregularities

Recounts of presidential election ballots in seven Polish polling stations revealed errors that credited winner Karol Nawrocki with more votes than were actually cast, a spokesperson for Poland's Prosecutor General confirmed. The development came as tensions escalated between the president and prime minister ahead of the announcement.

Nawrocki, the conservative candidate, narrowly defeated liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski in the June 1 runoff by around 370,000 votes. However, as the Polish TVP agency reports, thousands of complaints alleging irregularities in vote counting have since been filed with the Supreme Court.

Prosecutor General Adam Bodnar’s office reviewed recounts in 10 polling stations out of approximately 28,000 across Poland and abroad. According to the spokesperson, seven of those were found to be incorrect, and the court-led recounts showed that more votes should have been credited to Trzaskowski. Discrepancies were identified in polling stations located in Krakow, Strzelce Opolskie, Mińsk Mazowiecki, Olesno, Grudziądz, Wieniec-Brześć Kujawski, and Gdańsk.

The Prosecutor’s Office said voting irregularities were discovered in 9 out of the 10 commissions examined.The June 1 election resulted in a narrow victory for Nawrocki, who secured 50.89 percent of the vote.

Following the vote, Polish media began reporting instances of misallocated ballots, including votes for Trzaskowski being wrongly assigned to Nawrocki and vice versa—errors that appeared to favor the right-wing candidate supported by the socially-conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) which enjoyed majority rule in Poland for many years until the 2023 parliamentary elections.

By the June 16 deadline, approximately 30,000 election protests had been submitted to the Supreme Court. According to the article, the court is expected to issue a ruling on the election’s validity by July 2.

Ahead of the Prosecutor’s Office’s findings, Prime Minister Donald Tusk and current President Andrzej Duda exchanged pointed remarks over the issue of a possible nationwide recount.

On June 21, Tusk took to the X platform to publicly challenge Duda, President-elect Nawrocki, and PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński, asking whether they were not interested in the “real vote count,” and stating, “the honest have nothing to fear.”

Duda replied that it was the ruling coalition that seemed unwilling to accept defeat, arguing that the issue wasn’t the voters’ clear decision but rather the mindset of those now in office.

By Nazrin Sadigova