El derecho a participar en elecciones libres según la jurisprudencia del Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos

Résumé

This article examines the extensive case law of the ECtHR on the right to vote, as set out in Article 3 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights as a mandate to the public authorities but which the ECtHR has transformed into a genuine subjective right of citizens. In conducting this systematic study, care has been taken to avoid both the exhaustive collection of the ECtHR and the acerbic criticism that forgets that the function of a court is to interpret legal texts and not to replace them. The robust jurisprudence of the ECtHR in favour of the right to vote leads to an important conclusion for the quality of democracy: a truly free vote is not only one that is exercised without coercion (subjective dimension) but which is exercised within a society with a degree of freedom and plural options that allows voters to form their individual opinion (objective dimension).