In Real Life: Prisoner Voting - John's Story
In 1980, John Hirst was sent to prison. This meant that he was banned from voting in elections because the Representation of the People Act 1983 said that people who had been found guilty of a crime and detained in a prison or mental health hospital couldn’t vote. He brought a human rights claim in a UK court, saying this unfairly discriminated against him (Article 14) when he was trying to exercise his right to vote (Article 3, Protocol 1). However, the UK courts said that the right to vote is not an absolute right and the UK’s reason for restricting it was legitimate and proportionate. It dismissed John’s claim and did not grant permission to appeal.
In 2005, John brought a case against the UK to the European Court of Human Rights. The ECtHR said that while Member States have a margin of appreciation in deciding how to apply the right to vote, they still have to comply with human rights. The ECtHR said that imposing a blanket ban that stopped all prisoners from voting irrespective of the length of their sentence or the nature of their offence and individual circumstances was disproportionate and so constituted a breach of human rights.
After this judgment, the UK Government ran consultations on whether prisoners should be able to vote but did not make any changes to the law. This meant that there were lots of subsequent findings against the UK in both UK courts and the ECtHR in cases brought by prisoners who were still banned from voting. In 2015, the Council of Europe published a decision that called on the UK to finally make changes to bring it in line with human rights. However, it wasn’t until 2018 that the Government confirmed it had made two practical (but not legal) changes: to make sure prisoners are notified that they will lose their right to vote when they’re convicted; and to update guidance to clarify that prisoners released on temporary licence or home detention curfew can vote. Although this only impacted a very small number of prisoners, the Council of Europe accepted this update and the case was closed in September 2018.