Government promises "unconditional" right to vote for people with disabilities

POLITICS – Sophie Cluzel, Secretary of State for Persons with Disabilities, pledged Sunday, July 15, for the "unconditional" right to vote for people with disabilities, promising that they will soon have to fear to be deprived of this right.

"In France today, nearly 350,000 mentally or psychologically disabled people do not have the right to vote because a guardianship judge has declared them unfit to participate in civic life. ", laments the minister in a tribune published in the Journal du dimanche.

Indeed, according to article 5 of the electoral code, a judge can suspend the right to vote to adults under guardianship , a situation which may concern, for example, persons with disabilities who have an inability to express oneself. Before 2009, the opinion of the judge was mandatory, but a reform had reversed the logic by enshrining the right to vote, unless otherwise decided by the judge.

A commitment made at the Congress of Versailles

The Secretary of State had already badured, in February, that she wanted to go further, by removing this possibility for the judge.

On July 9 before the Congress in Versailles, "the President of the Republic made a commitment "the" return to full citizenship of people under guardianship, "rejoices Ms. Cluzel, seeing it as" a great victory "for people with disabilities" who have been fighting for over thirty years to recognize the unconditional character "of this right and will no longer have to fear "to be deprived of it"

"The will and the possibility of expressing one's choices do not depend on a level of economic, cultural or social independence or on a level of conna but derive from the intrinsic quality of the human being. We are not born equal before the laws of life, but the laws of the Republic must allow us to become and remain so. "

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