nam 22 uu 4500 10.17176/20200324-122934-0 DE-Verfassungsblog cr||||| 200324s2020||||xx#|||||o|||| ||| 0|eng|| 10.17176/20200324-122934-0 doi eng 342 23 Ziółkowski, Michał Author aut An Election in the Time of Pandemic Ziółkowski, Michał Verfassungsblog 2020-03-24 Text txt rdacontent Computermedien c rdamedia Online-Ressource cr rdacarrier In Poland, the Law and Justice (PiS) government has opted not to use its constitutional power to declare a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 spreading. As Wojciech Sadurski explained, its motive is simple: not to postpone the Presidential election in Poland and thus increase the chances of the President-in-Office to win the second term. The question is whether the pandemic may cause invalidity of the election. If the answer is yes, as I suggest, the problem is who should be the judge of it. The chamber of the Polish Supreme Court that is empowered by law to do so does not give an ‘appearance of independence’, following the PiS’s so-called ‘reform’ of the judiciary. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Coronavirus judicial independence PiS Presidential Elections State of Emergency Max Steinbeis Verfassungsblog gGmbH Verfassungsblog 2366-7044 https://verfassungsblog.de/an-election-in-the-time-of-pandemic/ raw object