People serving custodial sentences should be allowed to vote in elections to the Slovak Parliament and European Parliament but should not be elected to those institutions, according to an amendment to the Law on Elections to the Slovak Parliament and European Parliament that was approved by the government on Wednesday, November 11.
The amendment implements a Constitutional Court ruling from February that the applicable legislation barring convicts from voting in parliamentary and EU elections contradicts the constitution. The court held that it is inadmissible that, except for some extraordinary reason, any citizen should be excluded from elections and barred from exercising one of the rights guaranteed by the constitution. However, the court found that it is right that convicted citizens should not be elected to the institutions. “If a valid custodial sentence served on a lawmaker results in the forfeiture of their mandate, a custodial sentence poses an obstacle to exercising the right to be elected,” stated the Constitutional Court, as quoted by the TASR newswire.
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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