Kraków at a Voters' Glance

Description

The project is implemented by the Stańczyk Foundation for the local population of Kraków and continues and complements the Foundation's existing programs focusing on local elections and local government performance. The project seeks to increase the level accountability in the local political process. It monitors the compliance of individual election campaigns and election promises made by local candidates and the level of follow-up. The Stańczyk Fundation initiates a system of annual community audits, where will check all the facts in connection with promises and programs to make sure that political candidates are actually held accountable for follow-up. The project will update the Transparent Kraków (Przejrzysty Kraków) portal with information about political candidates and their promises. By doing this, the project will increase the general public's awareness of the election process and legislation. It role model, facilitate and encourage citizens to hold their elected officials accountable.

Summary of project results

"In Kraków, there is no established practice of holding the elected authorities accountable. After the term in office is over, the public often does not remember who they had voted for and why, therefore they have no means of evaluating their councillors. Candidates' promises are not verified, and the candidates themselves often do not have basic knowledge about the contents of their own pledges. The candidates often break the electoral law, to which the residents are so accustomed, they do not react. The objective of the project was to increase the authorities' accountability by monitoring the election pledges and encouraging councillors to remember their promises after the elections. Thanks to the project, it was possible to compare the collected data with the information delivered by decision makers to the National Electoral Office and the National Electoral Commission. This facilitated a discussion about possibilities to control campaigns, as far as hiding expenses or underreporting them was concerned. As a result, over 830 pledges made by councillor and mayoral candidates were collected and published. The publication made it possible to fact-check and control the level of promise fulfilment. The results were published on the websites: www.stanczyk.org.pl/przejrzystykrakow/wybory2014/ and demagog.org.pl. The project included an action of cleaning away election materials from public space. Documentation of local committees in Kraków and party committees at the NEC was photographed and analysed. The documents from local and party committees for Kraków were compared with the data. Objections were sent to the NEO and the NEC. Domumentation of the committees was published on the website finansewyborcze.pl. In total, 43 interviews with councillor candidates and councilors were conducted and published. Four meetings with residents and 2 conferences were held, 4 reports were prepared and 1 mobile application was created. The beneficiaries of the project were the residents of Kraków, who received systematic information about their candidates' pledges, as well as the candidates - paying attention to expenses of election committees facilitates equal opportunities in local elections."

Summary of bilateral results