CAN ELECTORAL INEQUALITIES BE LEGALLY JUSTIFIED? ANALYSIS OF BELGIAN, BRITISH AND GERMAN LAW THROUGH THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS CASE LAW* FRÉDÉRIC BOUHON** “By equality of suffrage, is meant equality of effect and value, as between the suffrage of one man and the suffrage of another.” Jeremy BENTHAM1 THE election is an instrument which enables a community to choose one or several persons whom it entrusts with a political mandate. * This article is based on a thesis prepared under the direction of Pr. Chr. Behrendt, which was presented on the 27th of March 2014 for a PhD de- gree at the University of Liège (Belgium) and later received an award from the European Group of Public Law (Thesis Prize 2015) for which the au- thor would like to offer sincere thanks. The original work was published in French (Droit électoral et principe d’égalité. L’élection des assemblées lé- gislatives nationales en droits allemand, belge et britannique, Brussels, Bruylant, 2014, 1009 pages). A summarising article written in French about this study can be found in: Revue Internationale de Droit Comparé (R.I.D.C.), 2015, 439-458. ** Doctor of Laws and lecturer (chargé de cours) at the University of Liège. The author can be contacted at the following email address:
[email protected] 1 J. BENTHAM, Radical Reform Bill, [1819], in: J. BOWRING (dir.), The work of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 3, Edinburgh, William Tait, 1843, Prelimi- nary explanations. ERPL/REDP, vol. 28, no 3, autumn/automne 2016 840 F. Bouhon When used at the scale of a democratic state, the election aims at reducing millions of different personal wills into a unique decision2.