Last man voting?

Arriving at the airport, I jumped into my taxi waiting outside. It was 19:42 - 18 minutes before the polls close. I bid my driver hurry to ul. Sarabandy, where the polling station for Jeziorki is situated (in the local primary school). The driver did his best. Red lights and traffic slowed us up. We pulled up outside the school, I rushed in at full pelt at one minute to eight. To my delight, I made it - but polling had been suspended. Ours was one of several polling stations in Warsaw where the turnout had been so high that they'd run out of ballot papers. As a result, our polling station would remain open while new ones were being delivered. They finally arrived at around quarter past nine. Voters formed an orderly queue, with me at the end.

This photo (above) was taken at 21:22 and 52 seconds. I was the last person in Jeziorki to vote; three more polling stations closed after ours, the last one being at 22:50.

The elections produced a great result for Poland. A much higher turnout (53.8% compared to 41% last time) showed that democracy is too precious to give away through apathy. Hopefully the result will mean an end to bickering and silliness of the past two years and a return to Poland being taken seriously on the European stage.