UK can decide on prisoner votes
The UK can decide for itself which prisoners are allowed to vote following a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights today.
The court ruled that individual states did have the discretion to implement any measures, having previously told the British government to rethink its outright ban.
However, the court has only given the Government six months to work out how it wants to reform the system.
The court said it had "accepted the [UK] Government's argument" that each State has a wide discretion as to how it regulates the ban, both as regards the types of offence that should result in the loss of the vote and as to whether disenfranchisement should be ordered by a judge in an individual case or should result from general application of a law."