1 Marcin Matczak Plague President Between the 16th and 19th centuries, city councils appointed plague doctors to assist those suffering from the Black Death. Now, in the 21st century, we are about to appoint a plague president in Poland. The governing Law and Justice (PiS) party is refusing to postpone the presidential election, scheduled for May 10, even though the COVID-19 pandemic is rampant. This is both detrimental to public health and unconstitutional. That the election constitutes a health hazard should be obvious. The Polish Association of Epidemiologists removed any possible doubt on this point in an open letter to the Polish government. Moreover, the government tacitly concedes this. For example, the most recent governmental instructions to public libraries require returned books to be quarantined for 14 days. However, no similar concerns over the “election package” are even vaguely discernable. The package is to be delivered to 30 million Polish voters by Sunday, May 10, and forwarded to the Electoral Commission on that date in an unprecedented move to hold the presidential election by postal ballot. That the election will be unconstitutional is obvious to every lawyer in the country, with the possible exception of those directly employed by the government and who wish to remain so. A letter signed by more than 400 professors of law was published in Poland’s most widely circulated daily newspapers last week. The letter calls on the government to postpone the elections in accordance with the Constitution, as holding them at the height of the pandemic violates the constitutional rights of both the voters and the candidates. To this can be added the legal opinions (including that of the author of this post) commissioned by the Polish Senate, which is still debating the amendments to the election laws. These unanimously argue that the planned presidential election is a constitutional catastrophe. The appeals are convincing and the legal arguments are irrefutable, as the Polish Constitution clearly allows for postponing the elections. All that is required is a declaration of the least invasive constitutional state of emergency, viz. a natural disaster. Many countries have done so in recent months (Italy declared a state of emergency due to the coronavirus on Jan. 31, and many other jurisdictions have followed suit). All the necessary preconditions are met: the Act