VOTING RIGHTS LIMITATIONS IN EUROPE AND CASE LAW OF THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS: CONCLUSIONS FOR UKRAINE

Abstract

The primary purpose of this article is to extrapolate the main conditions for the voting rights limitations and restrictions and to find out their application across the European Union, based on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, and compare them to pre-war Ukraine. The authors pay particular attention to the differences in the voting rights limitations related to different categories of people: in-country citizen-resident, in-country non-citizen-resident (domiciled or not ), and citizen-non-resident. Voting rights limitations may occur because of the declaration of a state of emergency, when voting rights may be postponed and scrutinized regarding proportionality. On the contrary, voting rights restrictions are related to different types of elections. At the same time, everyone who wants to vote or be elected should satisfy exact criteria (minimum voting age, mode of citizenship acquisition and quantity of citizenships, residency, legal capacity, etc.). The authors seek to generalize the common and distinctive features of those restrictions; otherwise, they might be disproportionate and discriminative, causing the pleading before the European Court of Human Rights. Here we examine legal and political narratives and relevant case law of the European Court of Human Rights regarding the voting rights limitations (and restrictions) related to age, legal capacity, citizenship, and residency, keeping in mind challenges for post-war Ukraine. The absolute character of the right to vote and be elected as declared internationally should not be considered as an electoral trompe-l'oeil but suitable for every democracy.