Criminal Offenses against voting rights

The right to choose as a political right dates back to the ancient times of humankind. The right to choose in its beginnings was in a narrow circle of people. It did not include the entire political, economic and social spectrum, but different groups, classes and interests. The saying can be that there were no real elections.

Even Kosovo, in the history of its political development, dates the right to universal and equal suffrage after the Second World War. However, those elections were never free and not even based on the will of citizens to be elected and to vote. The candidates for election were the favorites of the occupying and monist power. The monistic one-party system, as such, by itself could not offer even an approximate opportunity to hold free and democratic elections.

In fact, the right to free and democratic elections for the first time was sanctioned and implemented in the first elections for the Republic of Kosovo institutions (Constitutional Framework, 2001).

This paper aims to explore different aspects of the complex phenomenon of criminal offenses against voting rights, in order to raise the level of treatment of this phenomenon in Kosovo’s society. The organization of free and democratic elections and their success is one of the key points of evaluation of new democracies, considering that free elections are the foundation of a democratic society. Conceiving that this process is related to the quality of life of the voter, to the perspective of society and the development of the country in general.