Speaking on air on Monday, Wawrykiewicz emphasized that no one in the ruling Civic Coalition is alleging nationwide fraud, but said evidence suggests irregularities may have occurred in numerous local voting commissions.
“I absolutely cannot claim that the presidential election in Poland was rigged. No one on our side is making that claim,” he said.
“However, we can say that in many local precincts, the results may have been tampered with - and that alone is enough to trigger the verification mechanisms built into our electoral process,” he added.
Wawrykiewicz pointed to an unusually high number of invalid votes in districts where Civic Coalition candidate Rafał Trzaskowski had previously performed strongly.
“The scale of the inconsistencies is alarming,” he noted. “For the health of our democracy, these issues must be fully examined.”
Concerns over vote-counting app linked to right-wing politician
“We have Matecki’s app, which - we don’t know exactly to what extent, but certainly to a significant degree, contributed to results that were different from what they would have been without it,” the MEP said, adding that further concerns have emerged following an analysis of nearly all 32,000 local electoral commissions.
The app in question was linked to Dariusz Matecki, a right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) MP who has previously been temporarily detained in connection with alleged irregularities related to his political activities.
According to Polish daily Rzeczpospolita, the platform, known as testnr.org, was promoted by Matecki and used to verify voter certificates during the presidential election. This online tool allowed users to check voting certificate numbers in an effort to prevent multiple voting - despite lacking authorisation from the state electoral commissionis. The app is now under investigation by authorities after being linked to a server in Iceland.
MEP Wawrykiewicz filed an official election protest with Poland’s Supreme Court in Warsaw on Monday.
As of Tuesday, June 17, Poland’s Supreme Court had received 5,100 election protests - a number that may still rise, as many additional complaints sent by post are still awaiting registration.
Nearly 300,000 people have signed a petition demanding a recount of the second round of the presidential election.
Read more about this topic:
(mp)
Source: PR24/IAR/Youtube.com/@PolskieRadio24pl/X/@MicWawrykiewicz