Postal Voting In the 2020 Presidential Election – How Did Electoral Participation Evolved During the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Abstract

Issues related to electoral participation are extremely complex, not least because of the different approaches of researchers to the issue. The COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to specialists, lawyers, political scientists addressing the issue of electoral participation in the context of public health risks and the implementation of the principle of universality of elections. In order to provide greater guarantee of the principle of universality, many countries are introducing additional forms of voting in elections other than voting at the polling station. Postal voting is one of the alternative voting methods that appears to be the most popular in terms of participation in elections. It exists in different forms in different countries. In Poland, in 2020, there were attempts to implement all-postal voting at first, and then – after the second elections were held – it was decided to use hybrid voting. The aim of this article is to analyze the Polish experience with postal voting in 2020 in the context of the implementation of this tool during the pandemic.