The Suffrage

Wednesday November 06 th 2012

Suffrage is conceptualized as a democratic institution of public law which grants all citizens of the country the right to choose their rulers, or at least local legislators and administrators. Similarly, it is defined as the system of choice for public office by the manifestation of the popular will.

In times past, the electoral system was generally conceptualized as one which sets the universal suffrage or grants the right to vote to all adult citizens, derived from the restricted suffrage that granted the voting right to the people with a certain income level.

With regard to the legal nature of the vote, the doctrine identifies four basic theories to qualify the same: first; suffrage is a right, derived from the theories of Rousseau on the concept of popular sovereignty, understood as the sum of all sovereignty fractions that correspond to each individual; therefore, it is concluded that suffrage being a manifestation of that sovereignty, it is a pre-state right inherent to personhood.

Second, suffrage is a function, a theory that emerges from the conception that sovereignty belongs to the Nation as a whole and not to each individual.Third, suffrage is a duty, meaning that the vote is not a right available to the individual, subject to his will to exercise it or not, but it is a real legal duty justified by the need to maintain the harmonious functioning of the state political structure.

Finally, is the theory that considers the suffrage as a right-function, which results from a sort of hybrid that sees the vote not only as a citizen's right, but conceptualizes the same as the exercise of a mandatory public function; this theory is the one prevailing in Costa Rican legislation.

Suffrage is, in addition to being a personal right, a function, because through it the direction of general policies is determined, either by designating representative bodies or by voting on proposals subjected to the consideration of the electorate.For the suffrage to fulfill its primary civic function, it must adjust to certain parameters that constitute the minimum content of its structure and its characteristic features, which are: suffrage is universal, since it implies that its exercise should be practiced by all citizens without discrimination and attachment to any conditions other than those previously imposed by law regarding the limitation to the exercise thereof on the part of citizens. Second, it should be secret, as it has been stated that voting is a purely personal act emitted in a direct and secret manner. This is this way to guarantee the voter that he will not be persecuted for exercising his right.

Third, suffrage is direct, since voters vote directly under the supervision of election committees made up of those citizens interested in the positions of popular election, and not through third parties that were chosen by the former to that effect. In fourth place, suffrage is free, as it should be devoid of any form of intimidation or coercion that aims to influence the voter's decision, since elections cannot be free if those who govern can manage to remain in power because free elections essentially seek to legitimize and limit power.Therefore, all these features should be grouped and presented within the figure of the vote, if the same is to be represented as a democratic figure that has evolved with the passing of time and must be respected and consolidate more and more as time goes by.