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Świecie 2023

Key facts
CityŚwiecie, Poland (wikipedia, maps)
Official websitehttps://swiecie.eu/wyniki-glosowania-na-projekty-budzetu-obywatelskiego-gminy-swiecie/
Date of election2023-09-25
Title of the electionBudżet Obywatelski 2024
BudgetPLN 1 070 000
Number of voters (valid)2553
Number of projects on the ballot22
Number of winning projects17
Voting ruleMethod of Equal Shares
Voting input formatApproval vote, vote for at least 3 different projects
Voting rule details"Add1" completion, comparison step, minimum vote share required to be eligible to win

The city of Świecie (pop. 26 000) in Poland switched to the Method of Equal Shares for the 2024 edition of its participatory budget (with the election held in September 2023). A budget of PLN 1 070 000 (about EUR 250 000) was available, with 22 projects on the ballot.

Detailed results (in Polish) are available at https://equalshares.net/swiecie/2024/, showing diagrams explaining how the voting rule produced the outcome.

Świecie chose to use approval voting without imposing a maximum number of votes, but requiring voters to vote for at least 3 different projects. This was in part in response to the experience of the Zielony Milion particpatory budget in Wieliczka, where 50% of voters voted for only one project, and whose votes could therefore often not be taken into account in the Method of Equal Shares. Świecie also introduced an initial step where projects were deemed to be ineligible to win if its number of votes divided by the total number of voters is less than the cost of the project divided by the three times the available budget. One project was excluded in this way, because it received votes from 14.7% of voters but it cost 48.2% of the budget.