Legal Restrictions to Holding Elections and Referendums in the State of Emergency: The Constitutional Law Aspect

The article is dedicated to the study of the problem of restrictions to political rights of citizens in the state of emergency. Based on an analysis of laws on elections, referendum and the state of emergency, the author concludes that the constitutional legislator is forced to use methods of election (discretion), sufficiency of grounds (need to exclude spontaneous decisions), proportionality, detailed legal regulation (grounds for the introduction, cancellation and amendment of the state of emergency), reasonable flexibility of the legal policy and adequacy of the law enforcement practice. Extraordinary and emergency circumstances that objectively exclude any freedom of public events, debates, discussions, speeches and sharing opinions on politics and resolutions of government authorities are the only sufficient basis to introduce the state of emergency in a country or its certain territories.