The deprivation of the right to passive suffrage due to a sentence in a criminal trial may be because of offences of a specific electoral nature or any other offences. In the case of electoral offences, the justification is evident. Someone who has committed a serious act against the rules that govern the democratic elections does not deserve to be a legitimate candidate for public office, much less actually elected. In the second case, though, a distinction must be made between instances where the deprivation of the right to candidacy is a cumulative penalty as a consequence of a serious offence and those in which it is a penalty related to the type of offence committed.
To a certain extent, someone sentenced for a serious offence is separated from the community while serving the respective penalty. It would be an obvious contradiction if such a person could be elected to carry out relevant public functions. But some cases in which the ban has a different origin, still remain (like those sentenced for certain offences against the economic order, fraudulent bankruptcies, etc.). According to 19th century tradition, the good citizen was essentially a good father of a family and honest in mercantile matters. Any citizen who committed an offence that implied any degree of fraud (fraudulent bankruptcy or concealment of assets) defiled the economic or social order to such an extent that their exclusion from the social structure was logical and, therefore, also from the possibility of actively participating in public affairs.
