The United Kingdom’s standoff with the European court of human rights (ECHR) over prisoner voting is approaching a final resolution after eight years of political and legal controversy. The Strasbourg court first ruled in 2005 that a blanket ban preventing all prisoners from voting in elections was incompatible with human rights. That opinion has been unsuccessfully challenged in the upper appeals chamber of the ECHR several times, most recently by the attorney general, Dominic Grieve QC, when he supported an Italian case arguing an identical principle.
Having failed to persuade the ECHR judges to reverse their decision, the government published a draft bill last year setting out three political options: a ban for prisoners sentenced to four years or more, a ban for prisoners sentenced to more than six months, and a restatement of the existing ban – in effect defying Strasbourg.
Full Article: Eight-year standoff over prisoner voting rights approaches resolution | Politics | theguardian.com.