Implication of the Vote-Difference Threshold in Settlement of Disputes on Results of Election of Regional Heads on Legal Protection Principle

Legal protection is an effort to protect, safeguard and fortify the rights of citizens to avoid being violated or harmed, the effort of legal protection is built based on human rights and repressive protection. The realization of legal protection is the availability of judicial chambers for the justice seekers to obtain justice through the judiciary. However, the access to justice through the judicial process did not materialize in the settlement of disputes over the results of the Regional Head Election (PHPKADA). It is due to the application of the threshold of vote difference in the law of dispute settlement result of regional head election to be able to apply to Constitutional Court (MK) so that many candidate pair of election candidates who cannot apply although their rights violated or harmed. Based on this issue, a research problem appears on why the threshold of vote difference is a requirement to file a dispute over the results and what the implications are for the principle of legal protection. The formulation of this problem will be thorough with the juridical-normative research method by using content analysis and prescriptive analysis. The results showed that the application of the threshold of the difference in vote to file a case to the Constitutional Court is an attempt to minimize the number of cases filed, and must be prosecuted by the Court at the same time. The limitation of the number of cases through the threshold of the vote difference has caused the number of candidates for regional heads who cannot apply to the Constitutional Court when they feel that their rights have been violated or become victims of other pairs’ fraud. This is certainly not in line with the principle of legal protection in which each right of candidate pairs should be protected and given the opportunity to obtain justice through the judiciary. Substantially, an alternative judicial process should be established for the candidates of regional heads who do not meet the threshold of the vote. Key Terms: Threshold of vote difference, legal protection, rights of candidates for regional head