1.4 Nature of Voting Right

The voting right's contested nature: (i) a constitutional right (the citizen's franchise — the democracy's primary right; the equal-suffrage principle: one person, one vote, one value); (ii) a public-function face (the older view: the vote as the office's exercise, not the person's property — the duty-to-the-polity conception); (iii) the modern synthesis: the right with the civic duty's colour. The right's qualifications-and-limits: the citizenship; the age (Nepal: 18); the registration (the roll's entry); the disqualifications' narrowness (the law's bars jealously scrutinised — the adult citizen's franchise the presumptive rule). The right's protection: the secret ballot (1.7), the impersonation's criminalisation (Unit 5), the dispute's remedy (the election petition).