OPINION
The Suffrage Question Belongs in the Assembly, Not the Bench
Pripensa Voĉo318 wordsEdition № 85Sunday, 9 August 2026 — Edition № 85
The Carcamo case, now before the Federal Court with oral arguments set for September, presents a question that looks legal but is fundamentally constitutional. The petitioner argues that the Electoral Commission's exclusion of virtual citizens from the federal franchise violates Article III of the Charter. The Court will be tempted to answer. It should resist.
The Charter's silence on virtual suffrage is not an accident. The founding Convention in 1994 could not have anticipated the scale and character of virtual citizenship that now exists. The framers left the question open—not from oversight, but from prudence. They knew that the polity would grow, and they built flexibility into the document. Article VII permits amendment by two-thirds of the Assembly. That is the mechanism the Charter itself provides.
When the Court steps into a void left deliberately open by the Charter, it does not fill it neutrally. It forecloses amendment. A judicial ruling that virtual citizens have a constitutional right to the federal vote would require a two-thirds amendment to reverse it. A ruling that they do not would have the same effect in the opposite direction. Either way, the Court converts a live political question into a settled constitutional fact. That is not the Court's role.
The Assembly, by contrast, can move at the speed of democratic persuasion. The governing coalition and La Verda Aliro together command 52 seats—enough for a simple-majority statute if the will is there. The Suffrage Question petition is circulating; if it reaches 50,000 signatures, a consultative referendum will force a public debate. The machinery for resolution exists. It is slower than a court judgment, but it is the machinery the Charter provides.
The Court should decline Carcamo on justiciability grounds. It should say, in effect: this is a question for the Assembly and the people, not for nine justices in Meridian. That is not judicial abdication. It is respect for the Constitution as written.