Some Aspects of the Right to Free Elections in the Case-law of the European Court of Human Rights

Free elections constitute a basic instrument of democracy and their organization in States with developed political pluralism and freedom of expression never comes under question. The right to free elections as a political right of all citizens entails continuous engagement of the State into organization and monitoring of elections, management of voting lists and catering for impartial settlement of electoral disputes. This article is primarily focused on theoretical analysis of free elections, also having regard to historical circumstances of the development of election law. The latter represents a background for the core topic of the article, namely the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights in relation to the right to free elections. The evolution of the protection of the right to free elections is an unstoppable process that makes valuable contribution to the protection of human rights in general but also burdens the European Court of Human Rights with an even larger volume of work. In approximately sixty years of its existence, a short, restrictively defined provision of Article 3 of the First Protocol to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms has managed to encourage the creation of abundant jurisprudence and has set high standards electoral law in forty-seven member States of the Council of Europe.