Michael Pal and Sujit Choudhry Is Every Ballot Equal ? Visible - Minority Vote Dilution in Canada

IRPP seeks to improve public policy in Canada by generating research, providing insight and sparking debate that will contribute to the public policy decision-making process and strengthen the quality of the public policy decisions made by Canadian governments, citizens, institutions and organizations. IRPP's independence is assured by an endowment fund established in the early 1970s. F ondé en 1972, l'Institut de recherche en politiques publiques (IRPP) est un organisme canadien, indépendant et sans but lucratif. L'IRPP cherche à améliorer les politiques publiques canadiennes en encourageant la recherche, en mettant de l'avant de nouvelles perspectives et en suscitant des débats qui contribueront au processus décisionnel en matière de politiques publiques et qui rehausseront la qualité des décisions que prennent les gouvernements, les citoyens, les institutions et les organismes canadiens. L'indépendance de l'IRPP est assurée par un fonds de dotation établi au début des années 1970. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of IRPP or its Board of Directors. M Mi ic ch ha ae el l P Pa al l is in the third year of a JD at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He has a BA (Honours, First Class Standing) from Queen's University and an MA in politics and policy from the University of Toronto, where he was awarded a Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. He worked on Parliament Hill for two MPs through the Parliamentary Internship Program. He has been a legislative assistant at Queen's Park. Michael is past president of the University of Toronto Students' Law Society. He currently serves on the board of directors of the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario and is Senior Editor for Legal Theory with the University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review. He worked in summer 2006 at the Toronto office of McCarthy Tétrault LLP. S Su uj ji it t C Ch ho ou ud dh hr ry y holds the Scholl Chair at the Faculty of Law and teaches in the Department of Political Science and the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto. He holds law degrees from Oxford (where he was a Rhodes Scholar), Toronto, and Harvard. Professor Choudhry served as law clerk to Chief Justice Antonio Lamer of the Supreme Court of Canada. A leading constitutional scholar, he has written over …