Democratic elections are meant to express the political authority and agency of ordinary citizens: people who, despite lacking special virtues, knowledge, or resources, are able, and entitled, to govern themselves. If that is what democracy is, on widely shared premises about its nature and importance, there is something puzzling about the way philosophers, social scientists and citizens talk about it and think about its practice. Given this picture of democracy, we might expect them to be as keen to debate the content and justification of the right to stand as candidates for electoral office, and to serve if selected (‘the right to stand’ for short) as to debate their rights to vote – perhaps more so, given that the successful exercise of our rights to stand entitle us to be legislators, which the successful use of our rights to vote cannot. Yet, while the right to vote and its democratic significance, have received ample philosophical attention, the right to stand is the neglected step-child of democratic theory. The aim of this paper is to challenge that neglect and to illuminate the importance of the right to stand to the theory and practice of democratic elections.