Democracy as an institution for revealing the will of the people

Kravchenko Oleg Aleksandrovich PhD in Law Associate Professor of the Department of State and Legal Disciplines of the MIREA 78 Prospekt Vernadskogo str., Moscow, 119454, Russia sf-mka-spb@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Many established concepts of democracy have somewhat moved away from its starting point, which is the power of the people, their will. This raises questions about the source of this power, the processes of its implementation, the possibility of achieving the desired result.

The currently existing States, despite the commitment to democracy declared in the constitutional acts, reveal the heterogeneity of the organization of state power.   

To explain these differences, consider the following questions. How is the distribution of power carried out or how is the formation of the will of the people in a democracy, what is the mechanism of this phenomenon? Is it possible to determine that the criteria of democracy have been implemented in reality in a way that allows us to identify and qualify democracy?

The peculiarity of the method of decision-making and their implementation characterizes the essence of democracy, makes it possible to transform the will of the people into a state-legal reality.  The essence of the will of the people is revealed exclusively by analyzing how it arises or is constructed ^{[13, 18]}. So, the question arises about the way of the emergence and construction of the will of the people.

Traditionally, depending on the way of revealing the will of the people, two forms of democracy are distinguished: direct and representative. In a direct democracy, the people make decisions by voting for the political choices proposed at the ballot and by majority vote. Moreover, the range of issues that people can resolve concerns all aspects of the life of society and the state. In a representative democracy, the people also make decisions by voting for the political choices proposed at the ballot and by majority vote. However, in this case, the people delegate to their elected representatives their right to make decisions concerning all aspects of the life of society and the state.

Direct and representative democracies are of the same type in the way of forming and constructing the will of the people – voting in relation to a certain option of political choice. The issues of the correctness of reflecting the will of the people as a result of their vote were not reflected in these types of democracy and were expressed in a different approach.

In this regard, we will outline the allocation of three approaches. The first approach defines democracy as the participation of all (the people) in public administration, the exercise of power by all citizens and their decision-making at a general meeting (direct democracy or a procedural approach focused on direct decision-making in a democracy). The second approach is widespread in jurisprudence and expresses the totality of a different set of legal conditions and procedures, as well as the relationship regarding the delegation of power from the people to public administration (representative democracy or a procedural approach focused on decision-making by representatives of the people in a democracy). The third approach, which appeared quite recently in science, is a kind of synthesis of the first two, but is focused on the result of procedural aspects of democracy and asserts that democracy is the situation in the state in which the people using democratic procedures, participating in public administration through voting in elections, achieve a political result in the form of a change of one political power to another not related to its predecessor (let's call it an open democracy or a result-oriented procedural approach in a democracy).  

Consider these approaches. So, the first approach means, first of all, the mediation of public administration by its source – the people. This approach was the first to appear in world history. Its founder is Aristotle, according to whom democracy is a state form in which power belongs to the majority of citizens. The approach is based on the direct exercise by the people of all power in the State without delegating it to any representative body. The first definition of democracy was given by Aristotle in his "Politics": "The purest democracy is one that ensures equality - it is prescribed by the law of this state, and the poor are not subjected to greater oppression than the rich, the supreme power does not belong to any of these strata, and both of them participate in it" ^{[2, 16-17]}.

This kind of democracy existed in the time of Aristotle and was called Ancient democracy and later, for example, Novgorod democracy in ancient Novgorod and other cities ^{[19, 2468, 2483-2484]}. In the period from 300 BC to the XIX century AD, several European regimes adopted a variant of Ancient democracy – such trading city-states as Venice, Florence and Milan ^{[20, 44]}. In the century before last, direct democracy was observed in the canton of Uri in Switzerland ^{[21, 1-6]}. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, town meetings appeared in American history as a form of direct democracy and became widespread in New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont and Maine ^{[4, 221]}.

However, this approach to democracy is rightly criticized by modern authors, because in modern conditions, it has practically no access to practice. According to L.A. Nudnenko: "Democracy in the original sense of the word as the exercise of power by the entire population is realized only in small municipalities (in the form of general meetings, gatherings at the place of residence, referendums)" ^{[14, 13]}.

Its merit is the justification of the people as the highest and only source of power in the state, capable of independently exercising public administration. In turn, the interpretation of the people as a source of power allowed other researchers to further highlight the possibility of delegating this quality to public authorities, which created the ground for the second approach. 

With the development of states and the increase in population, it became clear that the direct implementation of the power of the people on specific issues is possible, but only through specially created public administration bodies, to which the people can delegate their power through elections, and they can already, on behalf of the people, engage in public administration. Speaking about the representative system and a popularly elected parliament, R. Dahl notes: "For the first time such a combination of political institutions arose in England, the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Switzerland and in several other regions located north of the Mediterranean Sea" ^{[7, 23]}. This approach was convincingly justified by S.L. Montesquieu. The thinker S.L. Montesquieu defined the category of democracy in the following words: "The nature of democracy consists in the fact that here the supreme power belongs to the whole mass of the people. Consequently, the people are here in some respects the ruler, in others the subjects. He becomes a ruler through the submission of votes, through which his will is expressed. Consequently, the laws must determine who has the right to vote, how votes are cast and in what cases; that is, first of all, the composition and methods of action of the people's Assembly, to which the supreme power belongs, are determined. Then other institutions are needed: ministers are needed for execution, and the senate is needed for council and leadership. The people have an amazing flair to sort out the dignity of faces, but they are unable to conduct business themselves: sometimes they have too much action, sometimes too little. Both ministers and the Senate in a democracy should be elected. At the same time, the structure of elections is important, as well as the method of submitting votes" ^{[6, 55]}. Unlike Aristotle and J.J. Rousseau, S.L. Montesquieu draws attention to the procedure of democracy, which is impossible without a vote aimed at revealing the will of the people, in the order and under the conditions established by law. This approach is the most popular among modern researchers.

The question of how the participation of the people in the supreme power and their decision-making takes place, that is, how the practical implementation of the theory of democracy in human society takes place, was at the center of research by scientists specializing in the consideration of the theory and practice of democracy.

Modern researchers consider elections and voting as one of the signs or criteria of democracy, without which it is impossible, consider them necessary and even sufficient signs (criteria) of democracy. Thus, J. Schumpeter said that democracy is "a constitutional device for making political decisions in which individuals gain the power to make decisions by competing for votes" ^{[4, 269]}. According to V.A. Tumanov, V.E. Chirkin, Yu.A. Yudin, "elections are the most important institution of modern democracy, one of the main forms of expressing the will of the people and their participation in the political process and at the same time a way of forming representative bodies" ^{[11, 33]}. From the point of view of N.V. Mamitova, democracy carried out through elections is a parliamentary democracy: "representative, i.e. election-mediated, parliamentary democracy, in which the formation of the political will of the people is entrusted to the people's representation" ^{[12, 11]}.

However, there is another point of view. Thus, M.A. Krasnov does not consider elections an essential sign of democracy: "Yes, elections are an integral mechanism of democracy. But elections (as well as referendums) by themselves do not always serve as a manifestation of popular sovereignty, and therefore do not represent an independent specific and at the same time essential sign of democracy. After all, elections are only a technical institution for revealing the will of the people" ^[24].

It is hardly possible to agree with this point of view. Firstly, people's sovereignty and elections correlate with each other as content and form. In fact, elections have become the only and most widespread form of expression of popular sovereignty at present in modern States. In this regard, if there are no elections, then this means the absence of popular sovereignty, since the expression of the latter outside cannot be effectively detected in constitutional and legal practice in a different way (without elections). Secondly, democracy, not elections, is an institution for revealing the will of the people, since the latter gives elections the ability to express people's sovereignty, wraps elections in appropriate organizational and legal procedures peculiar to democracy and based on constitutionalism. In a democracy, it is through elections that the will of the people to manage the affairs of the state is revealed. The main, essential feature of democracy is precisely the possibility of decision-making by the people themselves through elections, voting.

If M.A. Krasnov uses the word "technical" in relation to its meaning as "auxiliary", then it is impossible to agree with this, since elections are a necessary sign of democracy, which he himself indirectly speaks about. Thus, according to the above position, M.A. Krasnov also considers elections primarily as a form of expression of popular sovereignty and their own as an integral mechanism of democracy. It turns out that M.A. Krasnov, despite these characteristics of elections, nevertheless does not single them out as an essential sign of democracy, since he believes that they "in themselves do not always serve as a manifestation of popular sovereignty."

I believe that in the case named by M.A. Krasnov, i.e. when elections are not a manifestation of sovereignty, we are not talking about the elections themselves, but about their results, which for some reason may be invalid or unreliable, and in this case we can say that the risks that the in itself, the practical realization of democracy, embodied in the constitutional and legal reality. But if this has happened or there are corresponding risks, then, on the contrary, it indicates the need for a scientific analysis of elections as an essential sign of democracy.

Thus, M.A. Krasnov speaks about some of the risks accompanying the implementation of democracy, he notes: "The usurpation of power (respectively, violation of the sovereignty of the people) should also be recognized as obtaining public authority in the course of legally appointed elections, but in the presence of gross violations that do not allow their results to be recognized as reliable. Moreover, these violations do not necessarily have to be recorded officially (often the state bodies themselves commit violations)" ^[24]. And in this aspect, I believe that the scientific search for a problem-free implementation of democracy does not consist in rejecting such an essential feature as elections and leaving them only at the level of a necessary condition for democracy, but on the contrary, the latter should be developed through the mentioned feature, but with the search for a sufficient condition indicating the embodiment of democracy.   

Indeed, elections and voting are necessary conditions for democracy, since they are tools for revealing the will of the people, but the question arises about their sufficiency.

Another researcher, R. Dahl, quite rightly drew attention to the importance of not only voting, but also that all votes should be taken into account, that they have equal legal force. R. Dahl included the following as one of the criteria for democracy: "Equal voting. By the time a decision is made on the policy of the association, all its members should be given equal and real opportunities to vote, and all votes have equal legal force" ^{[7, 41]}. R. Dahl cites a number of conditions that, in his opinion, are able to adequately reveal the will of the people in a democracy. However, R. Dahl does not indicate how to check the effectiveness of their implementation.

As can be seen from the analysis, the theory of democracy is based only on those human values that are understandable and accessible to everyone, namely, on the equal participation of the entire people in the supreme power and on the fair decision-making by the majority of the people. These values are associated only with the method of government called democracy and, in turn, oppose other methods of government – totalitarianism and authoritarianism, and also exclude tyranny, despotism and usurpation. 

The justification for the justice and correctness of power, in a democracy, lies in its source, in the people, more precisely - in its majority. According to T. Jefferson: "The first Republican principle is that the lex majoris partis is the fundamental law of any society consisting of individuals with equal rights; that the will of society, expressed by a majority with a margin of one vote, must be considered as sacred as if it were unanimous…One has only to neglect this law once, and there will be no other law left but the law of force, which inevitably ends in military despotism. This was the history of the French Revolution" ^{[9, 63]}.

The above-mentioned justification of power in a democracy compares favorably with the justification of power in other forms of government, which in one way or another proceed from the fact that the source of power is an individual and/or a minority of the people. In this sense, democracy opposes tyranny, despotism, totalitarianism and usurpation.

In other words, democracy is the rule of the people in the state, in which the people have the right to rule in it, by making decisions by its majority by voting, and the rules of which are established by the state.

Based on modern research in the field of democracy, it is hardly enough to talk about it as the rule of the majority of the people (the majority of the people in many countries is considered as the majority of citizens who took part in the vote), since issues related to the practical implementation of democracy and the risks accompanying it, as well as the conditions and ways of its effective implementation, the above researchers did not find a reflection.

Thus, the essence of the second approach is manifested in the fact that in a modern state, the proclaimed values of democracy, as a rule, are ensured by the vote of citizens in free elections and the presence of a representative system that is designed to represent the interests of the people, which is generally recognized. This approach is the most developed in the theory of public law science, but it is not enough to go into practice as the final result of the action of these values and compliance with these procedures with clear and sufficiently defined criteria for its evaluation.

The second approach concentrates on the very way of revealing the will of the people. He does not single out and does not evaluate the process of delegating the power of the people to the state, for example, from the point of view of the correctness of achieving its results, providing these procedures with effective legal means.

As it turned out in practice, real democracy is not always achievable, which follows from the essence of society itself, which cannot be homogeneous, because inequality is a natural property of human society. In this regard, persons who have a privileged position in society due to their property, political or other preferential status will always look for a way to expand power over other people ^{[5, 9]}.

Plato also spoke about the possibility of abuse of state power under imperfect forms of government, and he included democracy among them ^{[15, 53-55]}. He also noted the possibility of the rebirth of democracy into tyranny. As Plato noted: "Well, let's consider, my dear friend, how tyranny arises. That it comes from democracy is perhaps clear" ^{[16, 350]}.

Democracy researchers, concerned about its current state, also identified risks accompanying its implementation. The risks accompanying democracy may be due to the lack of regular changes of persons filling high government positions. According to T. Jefferson, which he expressed about a person holding an elected office: "After he is elected once, he may not get one or two votes in the second or third elections and then he may turn to fraud and fraud in the counting of votes…The natural course of things is that freedom makes concessions, and the government always comes" ^{[9, 100]}. 

Consequently, the existence of elections in itself is not enough for the existence of democracy. For example, only one political force can participate in elections, they are not periodic or the period between elections is abnormally long. But even when there are no such shortcomings, elections can only be a fiction if they do not provide genuine political competition and real competition between political forces.

The second approach to democracy is not focused on paying attention to the fact that the practical implementation of democracy entails special risks associated with those voting procedures, without which democracy is hardly possible or at least insufficiently effective. The prominent developer of popular sovereignty, J.J. Rousseau, in his work "The Social Contract or the beginning of political law" expressed his vision as follows: "In order for the will to become common, unanimity is not always necessary, but it is necessary to count all votes; any explicit elimination of any voice violates the community" ^{[18, 136]}.

The inconsistency of democracy, which is contained in itself and is present in the following, is also not taken into account.

On the one hand, democracy is designed to express the will of the people and in this sense is a political instrument capable of doing so. On the other hand, the thesis about the desire of any government for usurpation is well known. Professor Pokrovsky I.A. in relation to the state expressed the following: "An omnipotent ruler over an individual subordinate to him, it strives for the same power without end and limit over other states, over all mankind" ^{[17, 12]}.

This thesis also applies to democratic countries. How is this thesis refracted in democratic countries? The states, declaring their democratic character, formally allow alternative elections, but it is the bodies of the state or entities closest to them (bodies with public competence) that are engaged in organizing, conducting and determining the results of elections, according to the degree of influence of the state on their organization and activities (election organizers). There are intermediaries between the will of the people and the results of its expression in the person of election organizers, who do not always correctly follow the procedural rules of voting aimed at identifying the will of the people.

So, in our country there are such violations that are noted in the media: "During the elections of the governor of the Penza region, as well as additional elections of deputies of the State Duma of the seventh convocation in the Bessonovsky district, the chairman of the precinct election commission personally entered in 1324 unused ballots – 662 ballots of two types – deliberately false information, putting a note about voting for one of the candidates in the elections, and placed them in a stationary voting box"^{[23, 10]}.    

The question arises whether the conditions of democracy proposed by the second approach are being implemented in practice, whether there are methods to verify the fulfillment of the conditions of democracy. Proponents of the third approach set themselves the solution of this issue.

The need to take into account the risks and contradictions accompanying the implementation of democracy has prompted researchers to develop not only means aimed at adequately identifying the will of the people, but also identifying conditions under which it is possible to speak with a high degree of unambiguity about the existence of democracy, which reveals the existence of a third approach to the definition of democracy.

His researchers proceeded from the fact that in a democracy, citizens should actually be provided with participation in power and control over it. According to O.E. Kutafin: "In conditions of democracy, the exercise of power is constituted, legitimized and controlled by the people, i.e. by the citizens of the state, since it acts in forms of self-determination and self-government of the people, in which all citizens can participate on equal rights" ^{[10, 87]}.

The importance of control by citizens was also emphasized in the Message of the President of the Russian Federation to the Federal Assembly of December 12, 2013, which indicated that society should control the execution of political programs ^[25].

Emphasizing the relevance of issues aimed at identifying the will of the people when voting, the re-elected head of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation E.A. Pamfilova noted: "We will continue to work to increase the confidence of our voters, our main goal is the legitimacy of the elections, the recognition of the elections by our voters" ^{[22, 2]}.

S.A. Avakian, through the constitutional and legal aspect, pays attention to the fundamental principles of democracy, on which it is based and without which it is impossible, one of them is called an electoral system built on competition and competition, ensuring the free expression of the will of voters. As S.A. Avakian notes: "in the constitutional and legal aspect, democracy is a democratic state characterized by: publicly operating state authorities; the distribution of responsibility between them according to the principle of separation of powers, taking into account national and territorial, as well as national interests in governance; an electoral system built on competition and competition, ensuring free expression of will voters; a perfect legal system, including developed legislation and a flexible legislative process, bodies that guard the rule of law, etc." ^{[1, 259]}. At the same time, the question remains relevant on what grounds it is possible to determine the sufficiency and effectiveness of the conditions proposed by S.A. Avakian in relation to ensuring the free expression of the will of voters.

In this regard, it is important that the voting takes place in conditions of maximum supply of the number of options for political choice, otherwise it will lead to a narrowing of the will of the people only with respect to the options for political choice proposed for voting and the task of forming the will of the people with respect to only these options for political choice. In other words, we are talking about the competition of political choices offered to the people at the vote (the criterion of competition in a democracy).

The non-admission of opposition political forces to participate in the elections, legally indicates a ban on making a political decision in their favor, and therefore a corresponding ban on the will of the people in this part. In fact, in this case, the people remain without the option of choosing one of the political decisions, which means that in the end the sovereignty of the people finds a limit in the number of solutions offered to them by the state, even if the prohibited option of choosing a political decision could not gain a majority of votes based on the results of the vote. This circumstance casts doubt on the reliability of determining the will of the people at the elections (the reliability of the elections), since it narrows the set of its political decisions and can give a predetermined expression of the will of the people for a certain result.

In turn, the options of political choice offered to the people should be brought to the attention of the people on equal terms. As M.A. Krasnov notes: "The fact is that democracy is initially designed for the clash of many wills, opinions, positions, values, interests, i.e. those very dissipative structures. In other words, democracy is a system that institutionalizes diversity" ^[24]. A person or a group of persons representing a separate option of political choice should be able to convey to the people their position on the choice of this particular option. At the same time, no position on the choice of one or another option of political choice should be imposed on the people or otherwise brought to the attention of the people in an unequal way, in comparison with other options of political choice (the criterion of competitiveness in democracy).   

 The competitiveness and competition in elections is violated when deviation from equal, secret, direct, general elections is allowed, active suffrage for a significant part of the population and passive suffrage of significant political players are denied, there are disproportions in the distribution of mandates received at the elections as a result of jerrymandering, excessive cutting-off barriers for party lists, etc., there are no equal the rights and opportunities of conducting an election campaign.

Some researchers correctly point out that the sign of democracy is not only to establish simple electability, but also to ensure that the election results are adequately reflected in political decisions. According to R. Dahl, such a criterion of democracy as equal suffrage implies that: "citizens should have the right to free expression of will and to an honest vote count" ^{[7, 51]}.

In this connection, even with the developed principles of competition and competition in elections and their effective implementation in practice, with perfect election legislation and its most effective application in the state, if there is no correct counting of votes, then there may not be democracy. Then, with all the apparent or visible democracy, competitive and competitive elections, the latter completely lose their reasonable meaning and do not reflect the true political preferences of voters, do not reveal the will of the people to govern, and the people cease to be a source of power in the state. The conditions of competition and competition in relation to the options of political choice presented to the people for voting are not enough yet. It is necessary that the course and results of voting without distortion (i.e. reliably) be reflected in the adopted political decision. The fact that elections make sense only when their results are not falsified is noted in the Russian scientific literature. Speaking about the elections, M.V. Baglay noted: "They make sense only when they are free, give citizens the opportunity to choose one of several candidates, and their results are not falsified" ^{[3, 124]}.

In other words, the mere proclamation of the electoral system as the foundation of democracy is not enough. The electoral system must be operated and practically implemented on the basis of competition and competition (the reliability of elections, the necessary conditions for democracy), and most importantly, the course and results of voting must ensure the free expression of the will of voters without distortion (the reliability of voting, the necessary conditions for democracy), and ultimately the smooth implementation of democracy. 

As S. Holmes notes: "Everything becomes obvious if we define democracy as a system where, as a result of fair elections, a well-organized ruling party (or coalition) with significant voter support can lose to another well-organized opposition party, also capable of governing the country, and after counting the votes voluntarily transfers power to it" ^{[8, 66]}.

The fact that a change of the political elite, unrelated to its predecessor (the condition for the reliability of the elections), took place through the elections, will testify to the true embodiment of competitiveness, competition, and the correct counting of votes in the elections. In this case, the fulfillment of all the above-mentioned election criteria is indisputable.

Thus, the modern theory of democracy proceeds from the fact that the demarcation line between democratic and non-democratic states is the possibility of a non-violent change of the political leadership of the people by voting in elections. K.R. Popper drew attention to this feature of democracy: "So what is the basis of democracy? De facto , there are only two forms of government: the one in which a bloodless change of government through elections is possible, and the one where it is impossible. Usually the first form is called democracy, and the second is called dictatorship and tyranny" ^{[26, 25]}.

The third approach to democracy is based on the condition that, as a result of elections, one political elite will be replaced by another unrelated to its predecessor. This approach is focused on the election result reflecting the will of the people and with a high degree of unambiguity testifying to the embodiment of democracy in life. However, this approach does not take into account another variant of the election result, in which the will of the people is not aimed at changing the political elite. With this variant of the manifestation of the will of the people, as a result of the elections, the political elite that was in power before the elections remains. If the will of the people is focused on achieving this option, then the legislation on election criteria and the practice of its application should be sufficiently developed and not give rise to doubts among the people that their will was correctly embodied in the election results. The absence of these doubts can proceed, on the one hand, from measures allowing the people to exercise effective control over the organizers of the elections, on the other hand, creating a situation in which the election result is not predetermined in advance. In this regard, the answer to the question of whether additional guarantees are still required to implement the criteria of democracy should be considered positive, and these guarantees should be exceptional, i.e. due to their high importance and ensuring important constitutional legal relations, they may not be characteristic of other guarantees aimed at ensuring other (non-governmental) legal relations.

In this regard, democracy, finding realization through electability on the basis of competition and competitiveness, which is its necessary feature (reliability of elections), can be implemented when the election results are reliably determined, that is, the results of the will of voters have been adequately reflected in official election documents (reliability of voting), which means that they have been adequately reflected on the political decision made.

In turn, the absence of a mechanism to guarantee the reliability of determining the will of the people, together with the absence of a change of one political force to another, unrelated to its predecessor, may entail both substantial doubts about the legitimacy of the government and democracy, and suspicions of the appropriation of power, and therefore the creation of such a mechanism is a prerequisite for the smooth existence of democracy.

Thus, at present, the third approach to democracy or the concept of open democracy is as follows: the will of the people is expressed through voting by making decisions by the majority of the people and spreading them to the whole people; using the decision-making procedure with the correct counting of votes by voting, which should be competitive and competitive, where the condition is either a change, in elections the influence of one political force on another unrelated to its predecessor, or the existence of measures allowing the people to exercise effective control over the organizers of the elections and the creation of a situation in which the election result is not predetermined in advance. In addition, it should be noted that in a democracy, the question arises about the nature and scope of the powers of the people. It is clear that the powers should not be unlimited and the power of the people should not turn into an ochlocracy, and here democracy interacts with constitutionalism, which provides the legal basis for the people to exercise power in the state. Hence, democracy is an institution aimed at making decisions in the field of managing the affairs of the state by identifying the will of the people through voting, the rules of which are established by the state.

Based on the above, the following conclusions and suggestions can be made. Democracy with the unity of the source of state power has differences in the ways of organizing state power in different states and can be reduced to three types: representative, direct and open. Democracy is a political institution designed to express the will of the people by voting. For the practical realization of democracy, voting must take place in conditions of competition and competitiveness of political forces, that is, the reliability of elections, as well as with the correct counting of votes, that is, the reliable determination of the will of the people when voting (the reliability of voting). The purity of these procedures cannot take place by itself or with the participation of the state alone, since it is necessary to expand the spheres of citizens' participation in political life and their legitimate activity. In order to implement the constitutional idea of democracy through the prism of the reliability of elections, it is necessary to highlight the control of citizens over the activities of election commissions. It seems that the more citizens participate in monitoring the activities of election commissions, the more they will invest in the development of democratic principles in the state.

The solution to this problem lies in a systematic approach, it is difficult to solve it by separate, albeit important single measures (for example, individualization of ballots, publication of all protocols of election commissions, etc.). Based on this, it is important and relevant to search and develop effective constitutional and legal means of protection against distortions of the will of the people.

The following political and legal postulates of understanding democracy, state power and elections are revealed: 1) the objective regularity of any state power is its desire to continue to possess it; 2) a democratic state is more effective than an undemocratic one, since it has legal institutions that allow limiting the usurpation of state power by any one political force; 3) a democratic state differs from an undemocratic one by the possibility of changing political power nonviolently through elections, the result which is not predetermined in advance. By virtue of the first postulate, in the electoral systems of states, there is a possibility of seizing and retaining state power in violation of democracy by distorting the will of the people, since the state authorities of the previous composition, acting as organizers of the elections, are interested in maintaining the status quo. In this connection, a comprehensive mechanism is needed to limit the possibility of usurpation of state power during elections at the stages of organizing voting, summarizing its results and establishing the results of elections (referendums).

Thus, the problem of the realization of democracy as the power of the people is posed, which is connected with the need for an adequate embodiment of the will of the people in the election results, the reliability of determining the will of the people when voting. Its place and role in the state-legal reality: firstly, it expresses the attitude of constitutionalism to democracy, to the reliability of determining the results of voting and elections; secondly, it has the opportunity - through the issues facing the science of constitutional law, to identify the evaluative interrelated characteristics of constitutionalism, democracy and the reliability of determining the will of the people when voting, their important features and consider as the opposite of everything that relates to the distortion of the will of the people, the seizure of power, the appropriation of authority; thirdly, it allows us to identify both approaches to issues of initiative, activity, citizen rights, corresponding duties, provision of regulatory prescriptions with sanctions and restorative legal mechanisms, and to the directions of development of electoral legislation through the prism of the reliability of determining the will of the people when voting.