Age
The age required for the right to vote has, in a way, evolved in a parallel fashion to the universalisation of suffrage. Historically it did not always coincide with coming of penal or civil age, since, at the same time, special requisites regarding income or social class were demanded. So a relatively higher age was required (around twenty-five). There have also been examples where a different age was established for men than for women. At present, however, the greater majority of states set the age to be entitled to vote at eighteen.
A study completed by VallÈs and Bosch, covering fifty-nine countries, revealed the following national age requirements:
- forty-nine states, including the majority in the European Union and the United States: 18 Years
- Iran: 15 years
- Brazil and Nicaragua: 16 years
- Austria: 19 years
- South Korea, Japan, and Switzerland: 20 years
- Bolivia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Singapore: 21 years:
It must, however, not be forgotten that, in any event, in a considerable number of countries, a higher age is often demanded for some of the elective functions. This is generally the case in the election of the members of the lower houses, and it is not uncommon in the election of the president in presidential systems.
The decision about which age to establish is a constitutive element of the right to vote usually taken up in constitutions. There is a universal trend to homogenise this age with the coming of civil age, even though sometimes differences remain with regard to the penal age.
Full Civil and Political Rights
Civil capacity: One of the consequences of declaring that a person is unfit to engage in civil activities or decisions is the correlative deprival of their right to vote. Voting is individual and implies the capacity of the citizen to shape and express rationally their choices in an election. But the majority of the legal systems envisage the possibility of a citizen being declared unfit due to serious mental illness or for other similar reasons. When it is a declaration by a judicial authority or another body with sufficient jurisdiction, a limitation of this nature does not cast any doubts on the honesty of an electoral process, as long as, in addition, it can be revoked should the person declared unfit recover and be deemed 'fit.' The opposite case does, of course, arouse doubts, i.e., non-democratic systems in which this or any other variety of limitation of civil and political rights have been applied to silence of the opposition.
Deprival by penal sentence: The deprival of the right to vote as a consequence of a penal sentence is a different issue. Although the deprival of this right as a result of activities of a political nature is inadmissible, as non-democratic states try to do at times, the majority of the countries envisage the deprival of the vote in the case of convicts for serious offences (by final judicial ruling). This is normally a cumulative penalty, i.e., not the main penalty for the offence.
Traditionally, this cumulative penalty was also added to penalties for given types of mercantile offences: criminal bankruptcies, fraud, abscondence, etc.
Within the very logic behind restricted voting, by which only those who had a certain income or educational level were entitled to vote, convicts were deprived of their vote on the grounds of certain offences of a financial nature. The latter implied a breakdown of the principles of good faith and mercantile stringency which were ascribed to the orderly merchant or to the good father of a family that the old-fashioned codes took to be the archetype (and restricted) figure of the citizen. In a system that only permitted participation to those whose income attributed an undoubted interest in public things, whoever committed fraud or serious offences in mercantile traffic had to be excluded from the vote. These exclusions are usually found in both the electoral law and the penal, procedural and even mercantile
codes in the subsisting residues of the exclusions indicated above.
Deprival for political reasons: There are historical examples of the deprival of the right to vote because of activities performed in non-democratic regimes that, in any case, require some procedure to guarantee legal certainty each time it is applied (such as the Nazis and/or private collaborators on the right to vote after World War II).
Exclusion of certain officials, religious ministers, etc.: During the forming of the liberal states in the 19th century the exclusion of certain categories of public officials and especially of military officers was not uncommon. This stemmed from the idea that it contributed to assuring their neutrality. There are examples of extending this prohibition to religious ministers or even to citizens of certain religions (in the United Kingdom
up to 1832).
