Prawa wyborcze osób niepełnosprawnych – zagadnienia teorii i praktyki
ELECTION RIGHTS OF DISABLED PEOPLE – THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ISSUES

Summary/Abstract: The article covers a couple of issues connected with the participation of disabled persons in elections. First problem presented in the dissertation is the regulation of article 62 of polish Constitution. This article states that incapacitated persons do not have election rights. The author claims that the regulation is faulty since the deprivation of election rights is automatic and it does not require the judicial examination of capacity of a particular person to undertake rational political choices. Combining it with the overuse of the institution of incapacitation by polish courts leads to deprivation of election rights of too many people with intelectuall or physical impairment. The next part of the dissertation deals with the real possibilities of voting by disabled people who have active right to vote. In Poland the only possible way of voting for people who due to the imapairment can not get to the polls is an institution of an election proxy. The author regard that this solution should be judged negatively and other solutions ought to be introduced to the polish system of law for instance correspondence voting. The article refers also to the problem of an adaptation of the polls to the needs of disabled persons. On the one hand the requirement of adaptation applies to too low number of election points, on the other hand even those polls that should be adapted in fact do not have proper facilities. The secrecy of voting is the successive point of the dissertation. Author indicates that polish law contrary to other systems of law do not provide mechanisms allowing blind and faintly seeing people to vote in the secret and independent way. The easiest solution are special overlays (stencils) on ballots with the numbers of candidates in the Braille alphabet. Since this solution would not ensure all the disabled people possibility of independent and secret voting other mechanisms are being considered. One of them is device that fills in the ballot in accordance with the will of the voter. Then the ballot is printed and voter can throw it into the ballot box. Last but not least, the article refers also to guarantee of access to full election information for people with all types of impairment. It requires such steps as: the proper information about the list of the adapted polls, an access to information in the polls, the leaflets and other informative materials in the Braille language and in the language easy to understand for the people with the intelectuall impairment.

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