EU referendum turnout to be kept secret?

It is unlikely that the public will know the turnout of the accession referendum after the first day, as the State Electoral Commission (PKW) intends to forbid local electoral commissions from releasing turnout statistics while voting is in progress. PKW secretary Kazimierz Czaplicki explained that this is the first vote in which the turnout is to be decisive. The proposal met with firm protests on the part of sociologists, who maintain that if informed about a low turnout on the first day of voting, people could feel more motivated to participate in the referendum the next day. "Providing information on the turnout is not a campaign for any of the options. It does not interfere with the neutrality of the procedures of the referendum," argued Mirosława Grabowska, a sociologist from Warsaw University. Constitutional specialists are divided on the issue. (Rzeczpospolita, pp. A1, A5) K.Ż.