Disability rights: UN experts reject restrictions on persons with intellectual disabilities’ right to vote --- DisplayNews

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 GENEVA (30 September 2013) - States should not prevent persons with intellectual disabilities from voting, nor make their inclusion on an electoral register dependent on capacity assessments, a UN Committee has said after examining the case of six Hungarians who lost the right to vote when they were placed under legal guardianship.

The six people, who have intellectual disability, brought their complaint to the Geneva-based Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) after they were unable to vote in Hungary’s parliamentary and municipal elections in 2010.

Under an article of the Hungarian constitution applicable at the time of the complaint, all persons under guardianship were automatically excluded from voting. The complainants argued that they were able to understand politics and participate in elections, and that the ban, which took no account of the nature of their disability and their individual abilities, was unjustified.