C. Brunelle and Fatin-Rouge Stefanini, “Préface”, in Geneviève Saint-Laurent, The right to vote limited by criminal conviction or seeking a balance between functional and individual rights, Michel Robert Prize, Canadian Bar Association, Yvon Bête, pp. XVII-XX. The question of prisoners’ voting rights is a delicate issue to be addressed as it has a highly political dimension, namely the ability of a state to determine who has citizenship and participates in parliamentary elections. Who might have thought that this issue would have caused the European Court of Human Rights to be soaked and considered by several Council of Europe States as “the drop of water that has overhauled the vase”? Other cases have also given rise to criticism of the Court, but the Court has crystallised the tensions and put a clear question of the limits of the case-law policy of the European Court of Human Rights. The Supreme Court of Canada also received important criticism when, by a short majority, it ruled that any general and absolute ban on voting rights was unconstitutional. Yet, the right to vote of detainees has for a very long time led to general indifference. Many citizens, including in truly democratic states, are still surprised that detainees can vote. In the United States, several states consider that sentencing to more than one year’s imprisonment (Felony) can lead to automatic disqualification of the right to vote for life. Other States, which allow the offender to recover the right to vote, are accompanied by dissuasive conditions. The US Supreme Court itself ruled that such prohibitions were not in breach of the Constitution. These reluctance to grant rights to those convicted of a criminal offence, and the indifference that their situation may give rise to, is a strong indication of the poor image attached to them in general, whether in prison or outside his or her walls. Prisoners or criminally convicted persons are considered out of the law with the entire historical and pejorative burden that this status entails. Because of the more or less serious acts they are considered to have broken the social contract and their very ability to be citizens and to participate in social and political life is questioned. If the ban no longer exists, the abolition of electoral capacity therefore appears to be a legacy of civilian death out of the law. Tensions over the rights of detainees or convicted persons are amplified with regard to the right to vote due to the special nature and place of the right to vote among the so-called fundamental rights.