CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Danó, Réka |
|---|---|
| Title | Every vote counts! The political participation of people with mental or intellectual disabilities in the United Kingdom and in Hungary in light of the international obligations |
| Summary | The right to vote is a fundamental human right and “the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democratic society.” Although the right to vote is guaranteed for everyone in the core, international human rights treaties, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (hereinafter: CRPD), most democratic States impose general or assessment-based legal restrictions in their domestic legislations on the right to vote for people with mental and intellectual disabilities. One comprehensive study, revealed that 89 percent of the countries studied worldwide disenfranchise people with mental and intellectual disabilities. On the one hand, one of the justifications for limitations is that the denying of the right to vote for this group of people aims to ensure an educated and well-informed electorate, as people with mental and intellectual disabilities lack the capacity to exercise their right to vote properly and competently; on the other hand it is also a common doubt that due to their mental incompetence they cast their vote irrationally. They could also far more easily be manipulated compared to the general population, therefore their votes could be misappropriated. In line but at the same time partly contrary to the European Court of Human Rights’ conclusion that “indiscriminate removal of voting rights, without an individualized judicial evaluation…cannot be considered compatible with the legitimate grounds for restricting the right to vote” , the findings of the thesis argues that the right to vote should be ensured for people with mental or intellectual disabilities too on a general and equal footing without assessment procedures and provides evidence that the “ability to voting” as such could not be precisely described and due to the discriminatory nature of voting competences tests, it must not be assessed. |
| Supervisor | Szilvia Halmos |
| Department | Legal Studies LLM |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/dano_reka.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University