a) Electoral criminal law 103. Criminal conduct may be positive or negative: actions or omissions may both be condemned by society. A crime is an action that the law has made punishable. Criminal conduct is any act or omission defined as unlawful and any culpable conduct to which one or several criminal sanctions have been attached. The state defines these in legal provisions prohibiting such conduct and establishes a sanction in cases where such conduct takes place, often a penalty that entails deprivation of liberty. The essential purpose of defining and imposing sanctions for electoral crimes or offences is to protect the values and legal interests that are intended to be attained or realized through the exercise of electoral rights, that is, the individual’s right to participate in the conduct of public affairs through elections. 104. Electoral crime is not a new problem. In ancient times it was necessary to punish conduct that represented an attack on public functions or on the free expression of the vote. For example, the ancient Greeks applied the death penalty to a citizen who voted twice or who bought or sold a vote; the Romans issued the Lex Julia de Ambitu, which punished the use of unlawful means for obtaining access to public office. Later broglio appeared in Rome, which nowadays could be translated as electoral fraud or vote-buying. b) Criteria for codifying electoral crimes or offences 105. There are two schools of thought on the law governing electoral crimes or offences with regard to where such provisions should be situated in the national legal system. The first favours such offences being included in the penal or criminal code, whereas the second argues that they should be included in the electoral law. Those who defend the first position argue that it is best for electoral crimes or offences to be regulated in criminal codes in order to protect them from constant changes in electoral law. Others argue that electoral crimes or offences are not and should not be outside the evolving dynamics of elections, and that the definition of such crimes should be revisited whenever the general legal framework governing elections is subject to change in order to maintain consistency between the substantive electoral law and the punitive electoral law. 106. Such a review may be particularly desirable where participants in electoral processes actively seek ways in which to subvert the intent of the law while keeping within its letter. In some cases, this could demonstrate a general wish to undermine good law, and such conduct should be kept 43 4. EDR mechanisms 102. Some differences persist between the electoral process-related criminal framework and the framework for electoral administrative sanctions, as is shown below.