The election was originally scheduled for 10 May 2020, which caused extreme political controversy related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many candidates, constitutionalists and even politicians from the ruling coalition criticized the government's plan of holding the election as originally scheduled during the pandemic. As a compromise, the
Agreement political party proposed lengthening the president's term by two years, which was supported by the
Minister of Health,
Łukasz Szumowski. This was rejected by the opposition. The main opposition party,
Civic Platform, wanted the election to be held in May 2021. The ruling conservative party
Law and Justice also wished to change the electoral rules and to organize the election by postal voting only. Changing election rules less than six months prior to voting was ruled to be unconstitutional by the
Constitutional Tribunal in 2011. Voting only by post is considered unconstitutional by some including Polish
Supreme Court in a non-binding opinion.
Email requests by Poczta Polska for private data At 02:26 early in the morning on 23 April, every Polish mayor and city council president received an anonymous, unsigned e-mail from
Poczta Polska (Polish Post) saying that they were required to deliver the
private data of 30 million Polish citizens including their
PESEL (national identification number), date of birth, address, and other private data in a
.txt file format lacking any passwords or security. Many Polish mayors and city council presidents, lawyers, and other citizens criticized the order to provide such private data, stating that the order violated the
GDPR and Polish Law, since the legal act referred to in the email had no legal validity; it concerned a bill that was still undergoing legislative procedures. Citizens and other officials stated their intention to file a lawsuit The copies contained the names of all the candidates and other forms to be filled by voters. Żółtek said that he received the ballots from workers of one of the companies that was printing and preparing electoral documents. Poczta Polska notified the
Internal Security Agency about the leak. As of 2 May 2020, Polish law did not authorise Poczta Polska to organise postal voting except in a small number of special cases.
Election day change On 6 May,
Jarosław Gowin, the leader of Agreement, and
Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of Law and Justice struck an agreement to move the election. The two parties had earlier been engaged in a political struggle over whether the election should proceed in May. On 7 May, the Sejm approved legislation for the election to be held via postal ballot. The same day,
PKW announced that "The current legal regulation deprived the National Electoral Commission of the instruments necessary to perform its duties. In connection with the above, the National Electoral Commission informs voters, election committees, candidates, election administration and local government units that voting on 10 May 2020 cannot take place." The movement of the election day was met with support and opposition from both the "anti" and "pro" Law and Justice spheres of Polish politics. An opinion poll for
Rzeczpospolita gauged public support for the Gowin-Kaczyński agreement at 43.5%, with 36.3% being against, and the rest undecided.
Judgment of WSA court On 15 September 2020, the
Voivodship Administrative Court in Warsaw judged that the decision of Prime Minister
Mateusz Morawiecki to hold the May elections exclusively through mail-in voting was "[a] gross violation of the law and was issued without [legal] grounds" and violated article 7 of the
Polish Constitution, article 157, paragraph 1 and article 187, paragraph 1 and 2 of the Electoral Code. The opposition demanded Morawiecki's resignation. ==Candidate selection==