ABSTRACT
Free, fair and regular elections stand at the very heart of representative democracy. They embody the Audit’s basic principles of popular control and political equality. Ultimately, it is on the ability of citizens to dismiss their elected representatives, and the parties for which they stand, that the principle of popular control over government is founded. The ideas of an equal value for each vote, and an equal right to stand for election, are central to the principle of political equality. Both principles thus require that the right to vote and to stand for election are legally guaranteed as individual rights if they are to be effectively realised.
