The World - News from Oct. 15, 1985

Poland announced that 78% of voters cast ballots for Parliament in Sunday’s election. This was the lowest turnout since 1947, and the banned Solidarity union, which had called for a boycott, said the voter count was even lower than reported. Turnouts since the postwar Communist takeover have approached 99%. Cardinal Jozef Glemp was in Rome on election day, and the government conceded that less than a fourth of Poland’s 20,000 priests went to the polls. Government spokesman Jerzy Urban said, however, that the voters “expressed their approval for the political policy of the state.”