Elections are crucial to democracy. Choosing the precise date to hold elections is therefore an issue of the utmost importance. Many questions arise when an appeal to the electorate is made: Is the date of the elections determined by the Constitution or the electoral law or is it in the power of an authority to decide on it? Is it a discretionary power or can the decision only be taken within a strict constitutional framework? Which authority takes the decision? How much time has to elapse between the call for elections and the date of the elections? The answer to all these questions determines the democratic quality of the elections, as they depend on the guarantees that surround these different aspects of the “choosing of the date of an election”.