  In this work, we analyze the effect of charge in compact stars considering
the limit of the maximum amount of charge they can hold. We find that the
global balance of the forces allows a huge charge (~ 10^{20} Coulomb) to be
present in a neutron star producing a very high electric field (~ 10^{21} V/m).
We have studied the particular case of a polytropic equation of state and
assumed that the charge distribution is proportional to the mass density. The
charged stars have large mass and radius as we should expect due to the effect
of the repulsive Coulomb force with the M/R ratio increasing with charge. In
the limit of the maximum charge the mass goes up to ~ 10 M_sun which is much
higher than the maximum mass allowed for a neutral compact star. However, the
local effect of the forces experienced by a single charged particle, makes it
to discharge quickly. This creates a global force imbalance and the system
collapses to a charged black hole.
