ALAJOS KISS v. HUNGARY JUDGMENT 7 “The High Contracting Parties undertake to hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature.” A. Admissibility 21. The Government submitted that the application should be rejected for non-exhaustion of domestic remedies, since the applicant had not appealed against his placement under guardianship (see paragraph 7 above). 22. The applicant submitted that he had accepted the necessity of his placement under partial guardianship in view of his mental ailment; therefore, he had not appealed against the District Court's decision. The purpose of the present application was solely to challenge the fact that as a person placed under guardianship he had automatically lost his right to vote. To challenging his guardianship was not an effective remedy to this problem; guardianship proceedings are not concerned as such with one's right to vote. Only a full restoration of the applicant's legal capacity would restore his right to vote, which however was neither possible (since he suffers from a mental disability) nor desirable (since he would lose the legal protection provided by guardianship). 23. The Court notes that the applicant accepted the necessity of his placement under partial guardianship and that, therefore, he did not appeal against it. It observes that the subject matter of the application is not the guardianship measure, but its automatic consequence prescribed in the Constitution (see paragraph 11 above), namely the applicant's disenfranchisement. The Government have not pointed to any remedy capable of redressing this latter issue. It follows that the application cannot be rejected for non-exhaustion of domestic remedies. Moreover, it is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 of the Convention or inadmissible on any other grounds. It must therefore be declared admissible. B. Merits 1. The parties' submissions a. The Government 24. The Government submitted that the rights under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 are not absolute and might be restricted under certain conditions. The Contracting States might specify the conditions of active and passive suffrage in their domestic law and enjoyed a wide margin of appreciation in this respect, although those conditions must not restrict the