Electoral commission blames IT system for delays

The full results of the local and regional elections held in Poland on Sunday may not be available until Wednesday, representatives of the State Electoral Commission (PKW) said at a press conference on Monday afternoon. If the broken down IT system is repaired, the counting will only take four to five hours, said PKW secretary Kazimierz Czaplicki. If the votes have to be summed up manually, it will take longer. The basic level of the system is working, the PKW said, which means that data from polling stations may be entered. However it does not assess and calculate the seats in elected councils. According to preliminary results announced by the commission, turnout in the elections was 47.2 percent, the highest recorded in local elections in Poland so far. The PKW also said that a number of large cities, including Warsaw, Gdańsk, Poznań, Kraków and Katowice, will see a second round of mayoral elections. In Warsaw, incumbent mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz collected 47.11 percent of the votes, while opponent Jacek Sasin from the Law and Justice party got 27.48 percent.