Deposit, Electoral

Deposit, Electoral 

in a number of bourgeois states the amount of money that the candidate for the election must deposit with one or another representative body when registering as a candidate. The deposit is returned if the candidate receives a legally established minimum number of votes (for example, 5 percent in France, 12.5 percent in Great Britain). The deposit required for eligibility for each office is sometimes quite large (£150 in Great Britain, 12,000 rials in Iran, $200 in Canada, 1,000 francs in France, and 100,000 yen in Japan). For instance, during the elections in June 1968, the French Communist Party had to make a total deposit of approximately 500,000 new francs in order to be able to nominate candidates.

Officially, the introduction of the electoral deposit is justified as a means of preventing the nomination of “nonserious” candidates. Actually, the purpose of the introduction of the electoral deposit is principally to hinder the nomination of candidates by democratic parties and organizations, which often do not have enough funds to make an electoral deposit or to pay for an expensive election campaign.