Legislative Framework

Topic IndexRegistration

The requirement that the citizen must be registered on the voters list is different in nature from the previous ones. The voters list, or register, is a list of the citizens who have the right to vote, i.e., who possess the requirements regarding nationality, age, etc., and reside in the requisite territorial area. This is an essential element in each electoral process, since the suspicion that there may have been irregularities in its elaboration has a real effect on whether the results will be considered legitimate. So much so, that references to the elaboration, maintenance and control of the voters list are abundant in countries whose constitutions have recently reformed their electoral systems or undertaken democratisation processes.

Citizens with the right to vote are incorporated into the voters list in accordance with three systems:

the creation of a periodic list

the elaboration of a continuous register

the utilisation of the register of births, marriages and deaths

All of these are analysed in another section of this project (see Definitions).

Reference to the Compulsory Vote

The survival of the concept of the vote as a duty, or, at least, as a right of a political nature, compulsory up to a certain age in some constitutions (e.g. Belgium), has a great influence on the matter we are analysing (see Minority Provisions and Voluntary versus Mandatory Registration).

It is a duty sui generis whose origin is easy to determine in the concept of being the possession of a national community whose very nature makes the vote something more than an optional right. Citizenship also determines duties and participation in public matters is, at the same time, a right and an obligation to each citizen. There are sanctions for non-fulfillment of the duty of voting that could be quite serious (fines, certain disqualifications, etc.).

It is, however, a peculiar, weakened duty, due to the confluence of at least three reasons:
- because of its residual nature: it subsists in a relatively small number of countries
- because the legal consequences of non-fulfillment is moderate in comparison with the non-fulfillment of other duties, such as the consequences for not completing mandatory military service
- because the political reality itself, seems to be weakening the legitimacy, insofar as abstention levels are gaining more and more political significance

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