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The focal point of this paper is voter turnout in the self-government elections in Poland. Particular attention is given to the turnout in the city with district rights, Łódź. This city provides an interesting place of research, both on account of its peculiar location in the center of Poland, and its recent cultural, economic and political transformation. A local referendum on the dismissal of the city mayor, held on January 10, 2010, is worth mentioning. Łódź was the first large Polish city (with a population of over 500,000) where a one-man executive organ was dismissed before the end of his term. In the paper, the results of parliamentary election turnouts are juxtaposed with self-government election turnouts. Voter turnout is analyzed for each term of the self-government in Łódź, and the types and reasons for absence are indicated. The author uses these data to emphasize that over the twenty years of self-government's existence, voting procedures in Poland have not changed and are the most conservative in Europe.

The focal point of this paper is voter turnout in the self-government elections in Poland. Particular attention is given to the turnout in the city with district rights, Łódź. This city provides an interesting place of research, both on account of its peculiar location in the center of Poland, and its recent cultural, economic and political transformation. A local referendum on the dismissal of the city mayor, held on January 10, 2010, is worth mentioning. Łódź was the first large Polish city (with a population of over 500,000) where a one-man executive organ was dismissed before the end of his term. In the paper, the results of parliamentary election turnouts are juxtaposed with self-government election turnouts. Voter turnout is analyzed for each term of the self-government in Łódź, and the types and reasons for absence are indicated. The author uses these data to emphasize that over the twenty years of self-government's existence, voting procedures in Poland have not changed and are the most conservative in Europe.

The project was financed by National Science Centre Poland (decision no. DEC-2012/05/B/HS5/01111).

Abstract
In the research, there was taken an attempt to analyze to which extent the electoral system, currently functioning in Poland, influences electoral participation of women. In the elaboration electoral participation, as a form of political activity will concern realization of suffrage right. The electoral system as a category of political studies analysis is the one of the utmost importance. The matter of scientific understanding of the system concentrates an attention of researchers for a while. The analysis of contemporary voting systems became one of the basic tasks of empirical political studies. It is worth look closer at an mechanism, which became a tool for enhancing a participation of women in political life

The focal point of this paper is voter turnout in the self-government elections in Poland. Particular attention is given to the turnout in the city with district rights, Łódź. This city provides an interesting place of research, both on account of its peculiar location in the center of Poland, and its recent cultural, economic and political transformation. A local referendum on the dismissal of the city mayor, held on January 10, 2010, is worth mentioning. Łódź was the first large Polish city (with a population of over 500,000) where a one-man executive organ was dismissed before the end of his term. In the paper, the results of parliamentary election turnouts are juxtaposed with self-government election turnouts. Voter turnout is analyzed for each term of the self-government in Łódź, and the types and reasons for absence are indicated. The author uses these data to emphasize that over the twenty years of self-government's existence, voting procedures in Poland have not changed and are the most conservative in Europe.

The article deals with the activity of women in the elections to the enforcement authority in Rzeszów over the period of 16 years, i.e. from the moment the act on the direct election of a commune head, town mayor and president came into force. An attempt was made to analyze the women's electoral participation in the candidacy for the position of mayor or president from the political science perspective. The choice of the place of this city is not without significance, as the feminization rate (the women's involvement in local government authorities in cities with poviat status), indicates that Rzeszów came 62 out of 66 cities (Swianiewicz, Łukomska, 2020, s. 9). Examining the representation of female voters in five elections not only gauges the phenomenon of female gender participation, but also helps to understand the problem of under-representation of women among presidents at the city level with poviat rights. The article complements the discussions on the participation of women in local government authorities, but also fills a significant cognitive gap in research on the representation of women in local politics.