Political Actors Thanks to or Despite the Law? The Empowered Voices of Individuals in Nineteenth-Century. Electoral Claims

This chapter analyses electoral claims in mid-nineteenth-century Europe, when voting rights were restricted by census requirements. It addresses mainly the cases of Spain and France, but also makes some comparisons with Great Britain. People engaged in politics through the vote, but also by contesting the administration’s interpretation of the electoral law and by using both positive legislation and natural law to claim their political rights. Electoral protests were introduced under the terms stipulated by law, and appealing to the law, but at the same time they went beyond the boundaries established by the more formal interpretation of the law. Not only did these protests enable individuals to raise their voices to denounce violations, but they were also used as a means of issuing political opinions, taking part in the redefinition of the boundaries of citizenship, excluding rivals, participating in the political arena and even trying to change the electoral results, regardless of whether these claims drew on real facts or not.