Abstract
This article develops the notion that a government has a public responsibility to prevent electoral fraud in a way that extends beyond the protections conferred by an electorate’s directly correlative right to voting freedom. Focusing on electoral freedom and voter fraud in electoral systems, it presents theoretical arguments for holding governments responsible arising from the incomplete or unclear nature of juristic rights, powers, and duties. It holds that such public responsibilities are functionally necessary, in the interests of a truly inclusive participatory democracy. The article uses illustrations of fair elections globally, and in the United States in particular, including the divided 2014 US Supreme Court decision, US v. Texas, in which the majority denied the right to vote to prisoners and parolees who are disproportionately represented by ethnic minorities.
Highlights
This article extends the arguments initiated in the book, Rights and Responsibilities,[1] to the responsibility of federal and state governments to protect the important political interests of citizens as individuals, or as a collective whole, from acts of political corruption as illustrated by election fraud.[2]
In the absence of an express correlative right of legal duties imposed on governments and an express correlative right of voters to be protected from such fraud, public responsibility provides more robust legal protection of the political interests of a voting citizenry
As Roberto Ago commented on the task of determining the principles governing the responsibility of states for international wrongs, that “it is one thing to define a rule and the content of the obligation it imposes, and another to determine whether that obligation has been violated and what should be the consequences of the violation.”[59]. Determining a government’s public responsibilities is difficult with regard to governments that either denying a right to vote to a class of prisoners that have committed a heinous crime, or restricting the right to free speech of Electoral Candidate X
Summary
This article extends the arguments initiated in the book, Rights and Responsibilities,[1] to the responsibility of federal and state governments to protect the important political interests of citizens as individuals, or as a collective whole, from acts of political corruption as illustrated by election fraud.[2]. This article challenges the conception of correlative jural relations popularised by Hohfeld a century ago, that a person, including a government, is subject to a duty only if another, citizen or the citizenry as a whole, has a correlative right by which to enforce that duty.[3] It argues that this understanding of rights and duties is unduly restrictive because it fails to recognise important public interests,. Such as voting integrity, that are not always protected by correlative rights. The author recommends that, in delineating the content of governmental responsibility, the effect of actions arising from the exercise of responsibility must be balanced so as to avoid having a disproportionately discriminatory effect on minority voters
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