4 MÓŁKA v. POLAND DECISION The complainant was aware of his disability and therefore had a special duty to acquaint himself with his rights and the restrictions under the Local Elections Act before the date of the elections. Ignorance of the law – in particular one so important – cannot excuse anybody. If the complainant had known the law, he would not have expected that it would be breached in order to allow him to vote. He would have taken steps to obtain the assistance of third persons in casting his vote.... As pointed out above, a disability is always a restriction. Therefore, the complainant’s argument that he did not consider the possibility of being carried by third persons to the polling station because it would have been embarrassing for him cannot justify his claim that he could not vote for reasons beyond his control. Since the complainant was put in a car – probably by third persons – he could have been carried by those persons, for instance in a chair....” The applicant appealed to the Cracow Court of Appeal against the decision of 12 March 1999. In his appeal the applicant submitted that: “Participation in the elections was the only purpose of my presence at the polling station.... I was not aware of the details of the Local Elections Act, and I thought that I would be able to vote in the way I had done before (i.e. ballot papers are handed to me under the stairs, I mark them and a member of my family puts them into the ballot box). However, this time it turned out that casting a vote by a disabled person would be considered as a violation of the electoral law. ... The Nowy Sącz Regional Court did not take into consideration my good will and my positive civic attitude and indicated several additional solutions that should have been undertaken by me. [The court] tried to establish that I could, and should, have solved all those problems by myself. ... Under section 5 of the Local Elections Act“... every Polish citizen has a right to vote...”. [It] does not impose on the disabled any additional obligations which should be fulfilled before ... entering a polling station. I do not know of any institution that would offer “election services” with a stretcher. ... Using a stretcher in the way suggested by the court would make the voting grotesque. In suggesting that the problem could have been solved with the assistance of third persons, the court did not take into account the fact that such persons could have refused help, or that they might not have managed to help (even using a chair because of the significant degree of my disability ...), or that there could have been a risk of injuries for those who helped and those who were being helped, or that there could have been no people around to help. The standard solution in similar cases is to provide a ramp or a lift.... Even in the case of the polling station in question, it would have been possible to prepare such a ramp at small (when compared with the electoral campaign) financial cost. I have read several times with disbelief the reasoning of the Nowy Sącz Regional Court’s judgment which states that ‘each disability is in itself restricting in different fields of private and public life. It makes it difficult for a handicapped citizen to enjoy his rights’. I think that this odd reasoning ... compromises the institution which protects social justice. By giving such reasoning the Nowy Sącz Regional Court outlined the position of a disabled person in Polish society. With reasoning like this one can deprive disabled persons of several other civic rights. It contradicts the perception of disability in all other democratic countries. The question arises here: can criminal law, tax law or traffic regulations also be applied to a limited extent in the case of a disabled person?