Polish liberal candidate's team lodge protest over presidential election

WARSAW (Reuters) -The campaign team of the defeated candidate in Poland's presidential election lodged a protest over alleged voting irregularities, its head said late on Monday, part of a wave of complaints from supporters of liberal Rafal Trzaskowski.

Trzaskowski, from the ruling Civic Coalition (KO), was narrowly defeated by nationalist Karol Nawrocki in the June 1 second round, with the nationalist candidate backed by the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party getting 50.89% of the vote.

Media reported irregularities in the second round and the Supreme Court has ordered a recount in 13 commissions, but this won't affect the final result materially.

"In a democratic electoral process, every voter's vote must be guaranteed due respect by state institutions. The election protest of (Trzaskowski's) campaign representative was sent to the Supreme Court," the chief of Trzaskowski's campaign, Wiola Paprocka, wrote on X late on Monday.

She gave no details of the wording of the protest.

Another member of the Trzaskowski campaign team, Deputy Defence Minister Cezary Tomczyk said on Saturday he was filing a protest privately, pointing to an unusual increase in spoiled or blank ballots in areas where Trzaskowski won in the first round.

He said that according to a model from UCE Research, there were 800 polling stations where Nawrocki had a "suspiciously high" score, and referred to irregularities in polling stations where a recount has already been ordered.

The PiS party says that Trzaskowski's supporters are trying to undermine Poles' faith in the democratic process. Current president and PiS ally Andrzej Duda said on June 9 that "liberal-leftists, want to... take away our freedom of choice."

Poles had until Monday to lodge protests with the Supreme Court, and the court has around two weeks to hear them.

The Polish electoral commission on Monday confirmed the result of the election but said that in the second round, there were "incidents that could have affected the outcome of the vote." It said it would leave an assessment of these incidents to the Supreme Court.

A Supreme Court spokesperson said on Monday that it had already registered over 3,000 protests and expected many more.

(Reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; Editing by Alan Charlish and Bernadette Baum)