Okręgi wyborcze w wyborach do rad miast na prawach powiatu
Electoral districts in the cities with county rights

Summary/Abstract: In Poland there are 65 cities which are communities with county rights, in which the city council is elected in the proportional elections. In accordance with the electoral code of 5th January 2011 in these cities the electoral districts elect from 5 to 10 members of the city council. The last local elections were conducted in accordance with the electoral law of 1998 and the communities were divided into districts electing from 5 to 8 councilors each. The division into electoral districts is done by the city council, and the principle of immutability of districts is declared by law. The author of the article presents the practical aspects of the division into electoral districts done in the cities with county rights – for the elections of 2010. The smallest districts were the most common (161 for the total number of 298), and the biggest ones – of 8 seats – the most rare (only 14 in all Poland). Where the elections were held in the small districts, 8% of votes for the list (and somewhere even 10%) wasn’t enough to get the representation in the council. It was also proved, that the smaller districts were in the community, the stronger was the overrepresentation of the winning party. The strong deformations of the results could be observed in cities like Bytom, Szczecin, Gdańsk, Łódź, Chorzów. The author presents the opinion, that much better and just would be the elections without dividing the town into electoral districts, so with one district for the whole city (the simulation of the results of the elections without districts was also presented in the text).

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