22 GORZELIK AND OTHERS v. POLAND JUDGMENT Section 4 read: “In the distribution of seats among national electoral lists, account shall be taken only of those lists of electoral committees which have obtained at least 7% of the valid votes cast in the whole [of Poland].” Section 5 stipulated: “(1) Electoral committees of registered organisations of national minorities may be exempted from one of the conditions referred to in section 3(1) or section 4, provided that, not later than the fifth day before the date of the election, they submit to the State Electoral College a declaration to that effect[1]. (2) The State Electoral College shall promptly acknowledge receipt of the declaration referred to in subsection (1). This declaration shall be binding on electoral colleges.” The relevant part of section 91 provided: “... (2) An electoral committee which has registered its regional electoral lists in at least half of the constituencies [in the whole of Poland] ... shall be entitled to register a national electoral list. (3) The electoral committee[s] of organisations of national minorities shall be entitled to register a national electoral list, provided [they] ha[ve] registered their regional electoral lists in at least five constituencies. ...” D. The Constitutional Court's interpretative ruling of 30 April 1997 42. On 23, 29 and 30 April 1997 the Constitutional Court dealt with an application by the President of the Supreme Administrative Court (Naczelny Sąd Administracyjny) seeking a universally binding interpretation of sections 5, 91(3), 79(3) and 87(4) of the 1993 Elections Act. In its ruling, the Constitutional Court addressed, among other things, the following question: “... whether it is implicit in the expression 'shall promptly acknowledge receipt of the declaration', as used in section 5(2) of the 1993 Elections Act, that, in order to issue such acknowledgment, the State Electoral College must verify whether an electoral committee that has submitted the declaration referred to in section 5(1) of the Act is in fact the electoral committee of a registered national minority organisation and may, for the purposes of such verification, require the committee to produce documents other than those listed in section 81(5) (i) of the 1993 Elections Act, such as the memorandum of association of the organisation ...” 43. The Constitutional Court held as follows: “... the State Electoral College, in performing its duties as set out in section 5(2) of the 1993 Elections Act shall verify whether the declaration referred to in section 5(1) of that Act was submitted by the authorised electoral committee of one or more 1. Section 134 of the 2001 Elections Act provides for a similar exemption from the threshold of votes. It is phrased in similar terms.