As is known, during the night of 22–23 April, Poczta Polska sent an email to local authorities throughout Poland demanding that electoral registers be provided. The email was not signed with an appropriate qualified signature. In addition, it stated that the data should be sent to Poczta Polska as an unencrypted file, thus violating security procedures.
Many local authorities throughout Poland have already announced that they will not disclose personal data. The reason is the lack of a legal basis for such action.
Today, the Krakowski Instytut Prawa Karnego Foundation issued an opinion on the matter.
The instruction to provide Poczta Polska S.A. with an electoral register containing the data of all voters, for the purpose of organising postal elections, under the legal framework in force on 23 April 2020, has no legal basis and may bear the hallmarks of a crime. Providing the electoral register (protected information) to an unauthorised entity may also constitute a crime.
Krakowski Instytut Prawa Karnego Foundation
You can read the full opinion on the https://kipk.pl/dokumenty/opiniaspiswyborcow.pdf
“Bolesławiec City Hall is taking no action in this matter,” Agnieszka Gergont, spokesperson for Bolesławiec City Hall, told the istotne.pl portal.
Czy popierasz decyzję urzędu miasta?
Below we present the content of the message from Poczta Polska received by Bolesławiec City Hall.
Subject: 2020 Elections – transfer of data from the electoral register
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2020 23:28:52 +0000
Sender: Elections 2020 <wybory2020@poczta-polska.pl>To village heads, mayors and city presidents
Request
Pursuant to Article 99 of the Act of 16 April 2020 on special support instruments in connection with the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 695), in connection with the decision of the Prime Minister of 16 April 2020 (BPRM.4820.2.3.2020) concerning Poczta Polska S.A.’s undertaking of the activities necessary to prepare for and conduct the universal elections for President of the Republic of Poland ordered for 2020, Poczta Polska S.A. requests that data from the electoral register referred to in Article 26 § 4 of the Act of 5 January 2011, the Electoral Code (Journal of Laws of 2019, item 684, as amended), prepared and updated by the municipality as a delegated task on the basis of the electoral register, be provided within no more than two working days from receipt of the request.
This data is necessary to carry out tasks related to organising the universal elections for President of the Republic of Poland ordered for 2020.
The above-mentioned data should be provided as a document (a text file with a .txt or .csv extension, encoded in UTF-8), bearing a qualified electronic signature, personal signature or trusted signature, via the ePUAP platform, containing the following data of voters included in part A of the electoral register referred to in Article 26 § 6, point 1, of the Act of 5 January 2011—the Electoral Code (Journal of Laws of 2019, item 684, as amended):
- PESEL (11 characters, digits only)—mandatory field,
- Postal code (format: XX-XXX, e.g. 65-001)—mandatory field,
- Locality—mandatory field,
- District (if there is no district, the field remains blank)—mandatory field,
- Street (if there is none, enter the locality),
- House number—mandatory field,
- Apartment number (if none, leave blank),
- First name—mandatory field,
- Middle name (if none, leave blank),
- Surname—mandatory field,
- Second surname (if none, leave blank),
- Voivodeship—mandatory field,
- County—mandatory field,
- Municipality—mandatory field,
- Locality identifier (SIMC)—optional field,
- Street identifier (ULIC)—optional field,
- Municipality identifier (TERC)—optional field.
The names of the locality, district and street should comply with the names used in the TERYT database.
The data listed above should be placed in the transmitted file in the order in which it appears, with each item on one line and the fields separated by semicolons.
The above-mentioned file should be compressed into a single file in .ZIP, .RAR, .GZIP or 7ZIP format without a password.
The transmitted file should be named using the municipality name and the municipality identifier (TERC) in parentheses; spaces should be replaced with underscores (_).
Any questions should be sent to the following email address: wybory2020@poczta-polska.pl
Yours sincerely,
Poczta Polska