Use of Electoral Law Terminology in Normative Legal Acts Governing Other Legal Relationships: Theoretical Approaches and Practical Errors

Abstract

On example of electoral terminology, the author examines the systemic aspects of the use of terms in various branches of legislation. As a specific object of study, the wording “electoral rights”, “the right to vote”, used in federal legislation and in the legislation of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, mainly in the field of regulation of various forms of democracy, was chosen. The context of the use of these terms, the completeness of the resulting legal norms are analyzed. In addition to considering the legal technique side of the issue, a theoretical assessment is made of the appropriateness of using electoral legal terminology to solve specific law-making tasks. The results of the study showed that there are violations of the systematic approach in the use of the terms. In other branches of Russian legislation, terms specific to the legal norms governing legal relations in the field of elections are often used either for purposes that are inadequate to the original meaning of the electoral legal term, or in a context that leads to the incompleteness of the legal norm. In some cases, these violations introduce distortions into the political and legal meaning of a form of direct democracy, and put artificial, unreasonable obstacles in relation to its implementation. These shortcomings are typical for both federal and regional legislation. The correction of such mistakes is not conceptually difficult and is limited only by the readiness of the legislator to properly take into account legal technique requirements when formulating legislative texts.