A Reader called the editorial office. He is a resident of Bolesławiec with neither a permanent nor temporary registered address. (He stays with friends. Sometimes in a basement, sometimes in an attic.)
The man told us that he wanted to take part in the upcoming parliamentary elections. He intended to register in the electoral roll. For this purpose, he went to the municipal office. There, he was given a form to complete.
And that was when, as the homeless man stresses, the problems began. He was ordered to enter his registered address. The problem was that the man... was not registered anywhere.
As he relates, he was then told to enter his previous address. “That somehow didn’t seem right to me either,” he explained in a conversation with the istotne.pl service. “I didn’t want to lie to the system.”
The man who reported the matter told us that he had not had a permanent place of residence since the end of 2016. Life—as he put it himself—had dealt him a powerful blow. He fell into debt and went bankrupt. He lost his home and family. Almost everyone turned away from him. “But that doesn’t mean I stopped being a human being,” he stressed. “No court has taken that right away from me. I am not a criminal. But to the state I am an outcast; I do not exist.”
Our doubts were clarified by Jerzy Zieliński, secretary of the City of Bolesławiec:
Homeless people can vote. At some point, they were included in an electoral roll. If officials enter a person in the municipal electoral roll, they must remove that person from the previous entry.
This homeless man therefore has to provide the location of his last residence. There is a presumption that this person appears on some electoral roll. We cannot allow a citizen to vote in two places at the same time.
He added:
And this is the only reason why the homeless man in question cannot leave blank the field on this document concerning his last place of residence. Only on this basis can the office check whether the man appears on another electoral roll. If he does, he can then be removed from the previous roll and entered in ours.
What do you think? We invite you to discuss it.