Problematyka czynnego i biernego prawa wyborczego kobiet w wyborach do Sejmu Ustawodawczego w świetle publicystyki politycznej II Rzeczypospolitej (listopad 1918 r.–styczeń 1919 r.)

The issue of suffrage in the elections to the Legislative Sejm evoked interest in newspapers published at the territory of the renascent Polish State. Both the legislative works were reported, conducted at the order of Chief of State Józef Piłsudski by the government of Jędrzej Morawiecki, and individual legal solutions, included in the electoral ordinance of 28 November 1918, were analyzed. Indubitably, the greatest controversies were raised by the issue of regulating the principle of franchise universality. Ultimately, majority of participants of the discussion — even if they had earlier distanced themselves from the program ideas publicly popularized by Moraczewski and Piłsudski — supported the decision on vesting women with both active and passive suffrage in the elections to the Sejm. An important role in this discussion was played by representatives of women’s organizations. They published articles, where attention was drawn to those aspects of franchise and right to stand for election that had been ignored by participants of the discussion. Thus, a systemic debate initiated at the origins of the Second Republic gained a deeper and innovative character and went down in the history of post-partition independent Poland.