It is interesting to note that the European Court of Human Rights was invited to reach a decision on the issue of the voters’ choice in closed-list systems in the case Saccomanno and Others v. Italy. The applicants complained that they had not been able to express their preference for a candidate in the parliamentary elections since Italian law did not permit the direct election of representatives by voters (submission by political parties of “closed” candidate lists: the order of candidates elected on a list is established by the party itself and voters cannot express their preference for any particular candidate). Considering the “wide margin of appreciation enjoyed by the States in this regard and the need to assess electoral legislation as a whole in the light of political developments and on the basis of the country’s historical and political context”, the Court held that the closed list system had not been in breach of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1. The Court therefore decided that the complaint was inadmissible(complaint manifestly ill-founded).