Summary
Family/group voting should be prohibited.
Obligations
Election Parts
Issues
Quotes
- [Member states should] ensure that women and men can exercise their individual voting rights and, to this end, take all the necessary measures to eliminate the practice of family voting.
- [Member states should] ensure that women and men can exercise their individual voting rights and, to this end, take all the necessary measures to eliminate the practice of family voting.
- Ensuring that electors are alone when voting and not accompanied by friends or family.
- The principle of secrecy of the vote requires that election regulations underline that secret voting is not only a right on the part of the voter, but an absolute obligation. In this regard, the most frequent abuse is "family voting".
- The practice of family voting -- where the head of a family casts ballots on behalf of the other members of the family -- should not be condoned.
- Voting must be individual. Family voting and any other form of control by one voter over the vote of another must be prohibited.
- Voting must be individual. Family voting and any other form of control by one voter over the vote of another must be prohibited.
- Voting must be individual. Family voting, whereby one member of a given family can supervise the votes cast by the other members, infringes the secrecy of the ballot; it is a common violation of the electoral law. All other forms of control by one voter over the vote of another must also be prohibited. Proxy voting, which is subject to strict conditions, is a separate issue.
- Obviously, family and group voting is by no means acceptable. It tends to deprive women, and sometimes young people, of their individual voting rights and as such amounts to a form electoral fraud (see for example CG/BUR (11) 95). The Congress Recommendation 111 (2002) emphasised the paramount importance of women’s right to an individual, free, and secret vote and underlined that the problem of family voting is unacceptable from the standpoint of women’s fundamental rights (CG/BUR (11) 122 rev). It should be clear, however, that preventing effectively family and group voting requires a radical change of attitudes, which must be actively promoted by the authorities (CDLAD(2002)023rev, para. 30).
- Observers must also look out for family (group) voting, whereby the "head of household" leads other family members through the process, often by taking control of identifying documents and even marking, or at least giving instructions to other family members about marking the ballots.