There have been several Polish elections recently, most notably the October 2023 parliamentary elections, which resulted in a significant political shift in Poland’s landscape. The outcome saw previous Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, from the populistic Law and Justice party, booted off in favour of Donald Tusk, leader of the Civic Coalition. Six months later the Polish local elections were held to elect members for all the regional assemblies, county and municipal councils, municipality heads, city mayors, as well as the 18 district councils of Warsaw.

The Political Accountability Foundation (PAF) is a civil society group that observes the Polish electoral process. In addition to monitoring the national elections, PAF provided electoral oversight during the June 2024 European Parliament elections as part of an election-monitoring project with Liberties and its coalition partners. Titled ‘Electoral Integrity and Political Microtargeting: An Evidence-Based Analysis in Six EU Member States’, the project focuses on evaluating the compliance of political advertisers regarding national campaigning laws, as well as the compliance of social media providers such as Meta, who must follow the rules stated in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as well as the Digital Services Act (DSA).

Rule evaders

With this substantial experience in election monitoring, Sylwester Oracz, a cybersecurity expert for PAF, shared insights into his advocacy work and research findings.

PAF has been working with the National Election Commission (NEC) to audit the financial reports of political parties for the parliamentary elections. NGOs who monitor political spending can review party and campaign reports and point out discrepancies before the NEC gives final approval. Access to relevant documents is available only in the NEC building, which is closed to the public. Sylwester was invited to the NEC to look at the large stacks of reports and cross-check them with data obtained through the Facebook and Google ad libraries, with help from our technical partner, Who Targets Me.

PAF observed that advertisements obviously about elections were often not correctly marked on Facebook as ’campaign materials’ in an attempt to bypass election advertising rules on Facebook. Historically, some adverts marked correctly on social media were missing from party reports. Additionally, certain candidates were paying from their own pockets, not registering the adverts with the campaign, and bypassing regulations. PAF has reported on this for years, finding that political advertisements financed by individuals:

"...is also becoming a common situation. Politically engaged individuals publish the ads themselves, thereby potentially circumventing the regulations imposed on political parties and election committees making monitoring of campaign finance inefficient and blurring the line between political and private."

Parties posing as private individuals

The Political Accountability Foundation came across several ads promoting a candidate or party, without an explicit call to vote for them. Technically, this allows these ads to avoid being linked to a campaign. Candidates also circumvented regulation by placing ads described ‘personal branding’ and not a political ad. In both cases, campaigners can deny they are part of the party and pose as interested, private individuals, leaving these political adverts entirely without accountability.

Sylwester also expressed frustration with the NEC’s inability to investigate ad libraries for infringements, as they lack the power to investigate on their own initiative. Instead, it is up to citizens to report mislabelled ads to the NEC, at which point it can take action. Hoping for a change, Sylwester is considering mass reporting such ads, an action the NEC would need to respond to.

The biggest challenge Sylwester has encountered monitoring Polish elections is that existing laws are unsuitable for the shift to online campaigning. There are no separate regulations addressing campaign and campaign finance on the Internet. Anyone in Poland can campaign as long as they are a Polish resident and have approval from a political party. This was easily tracked when campaigning was done through posters, where entry-level was deterring those who wanted to spend money on the advertisement. However, on Facebook or Google it is extremely easy to run a campaign bypassing spending caps. According to Sylwester, Polish regulations have not been updated in the last 15 years to properly address the rise in online political advertising. He remembers discussions regarding online campaigning took place in 2011, but it did not result in written-in law.

Sylwester and PAF will continue their electoral monitoring work bringing these issues to light. You can follow their work here.