O problemie dopuszczalnosci prowadzenia kampanii profrekwencyjnej w okresie siszy referendalnej

• Authors: Bartłomiej Michalak , Anna Frydrych

Title variants

EN

ON THE PERMISSIBILITY OF CARRYING OUT A VOTER TURNOUT CAMPAIGN IN THE PERIOD OF PRE-REFERENDUM MEDIA SILENCE

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

This article deals with the issue of permissibility of conducting a campaign to increase voter turnout in the course of pre-referendum media silence. A voter turnout not only attracts growing interest of scientists and politicians, but also has become the subject of a wider public debate. As a result, each year there are more new initiatives aimed at increasing among the citizens the awareness of the importance of their participation in elections and referendums and mobilising them to participate in the voting. The authors focus their attention on the difference between election and referendum voter turnouts, i.e. the participation requirement necessary to make the vote valid, both in respect of a local and a nationwide referendum. They show that launching of actions aimed at boosting voter turnout in the period of media silence is a much more complex and unequivocal problem in the case of a referendum. The ‘referendum validity threshold’, intended to guarantee the representative nature of the decisions may, in practice, be used by the minority to forcibly impose its will upon the majority. Voter turnout campaigns can be used to achieve this goal. The article is composed of six parts: an introduction, presentation of the core of pre-referendum media silence and its normative regulation, referendum’s validity requirements, arguments for and against carrying out a voter turnout campaign during the period of pre-referendum media silence, and a summary.

Keywords

EN

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (POLAND); ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN

• Publisher: Kancelaria Sejmu / Chancellery of the Sejm
• Journal: Przegląd Sejmowy
• Year: 2012
• Issue: 1(108)
• Pages: 43-57

Contributors

author

Bartłomiej Michalak

• Wydział Politologii i Studiów Międzynarodowych Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu, ul. Batorego 39 L, 87-100 Toruń, Poland

author

Anna Frydrych

• Wydział Prawa i Administracji Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu, ul. Gagarina 15, 87-100 Toruń, Poland