Human Rights Debate

As the UK Government bows to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and prepares to give offenders the vote, Politeia’s next author explains voting rights are not human rights:

• It’s not  a human right to be allowed to vote anymore than it’s a human right to live in a democracy
• There are no universal democracies where everyone has the right to vote including non- nationals or children. No one sees this is an infringement.

Are prisoners’ human rights infringed because they are deprived of their vote? The answer is clearly negative, and it has nothing to do with prisoners’ special position as condemned offenders against society. It is not a human right to be allowed to vote, and so no one’s human rights are affected by being allowed to vote or not. It is not a human right to be allowed to vote, because it is not a human right to live in a democracy. Inhabitants of dictatorships, absolute monarchies, oligarchies or whatever do not have any human rights infringed merely from the fact that they live under such political arrangements. There is indeed reason to think that abuses of human rights are less likely to occur in a democracy than under other political systems. But it is perfectly possible for there to be, for instance, a dictatorship or an oligarchy in which human rights are safeguarded (and, as we know, a democracy in which they are not). But, if it is not a human right to live in a democracy at all, then it is even less a human right to live in a particular sort of democracy – a universal democracy in which everyone has the vote.

Moreover, if it is a human right to vote, then almost every democracy is infringing human rights, even if it allows prisoners to vote, since it is usual to exclude two groups of people even in systems that pride themselves on being universal: non-nationals even if they are permanent residents working in the country, and those under the age of majority. Human rights – if they are anything at all – are the rights that any human enjoys in virtue of being human. If we were infringing someone’s genuine human right (for example, we were torturing the person), would it be acceptable if we explained: ‘Oh, but he’s only a child’ or ‘Don’t worry, she’s a foreigner’? The fact that we all accept age and nationality restrictions for voting indicates that in our normal practice we, very wisely, do not at all regard voting as a human right.

John Marenbon, Trinity College, Cambridge