Past Event! Note: this event has already taken place.
JurisTalk | The Comparative Constitutional Politics of Voter Suppression
February 28, 2017 at 2:30 PM to 5:30 PM
| Location: | D492 Loeb Building |
| Cost: | Free |
| Audience: | Anyone |
| Key Contact: | Prof. Zoran Oklopcic |
| Contact Email: | zoran.oklopcic@carleton.ca |
with Prof. Michael Pal, Faculty of Law – Common Law Section, University of Ottawa
In this presentation, Prof. Pal argues that voter suppression should be understood as a comparative phenomenon and trace the constitutional politics of the practice. Voter suppression involves deliberate attempts to craft electoral laws so as to dissuade or prevent citizens from casting ballots in elections. Voter suppression stands as a staple of political and legal contestation in the United States, centering particularly in recent ye
ars around restrictive voter identification rules and the Voting Rights Act. Despite attempts at voter suppression by governments in other democracies, including prominently in recent years in Canada with the Fair Elections Act, as well as in India, South Africa, and Australia, the practice has received little scholarly attention outside of the United States. Prof. Pal argues that voter suppression must be understood as a problem plaguing democracies generally and consider the implications for democratic practice, constitutional design, and judicial review of election laws.
About the Speaker:
Michael Pal is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa, where he is the Director of the Public Law Group. He specializes in the comparative law of democracy and publishes in law, political science, and public policy. He is the co-editor of a 2017 special edition of the Election Law Journal on electoral reform around the world. He has a law degree and doctorate in law from the University of Toronto, where he was a Pierre-Elliot Trudeau Foundation Scholar, and an LLM in Legal Theory from the NYU School of Law. He is also a Fellow at the Mowat Centre in the School of Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Professor Pal has advised governments at all levels as well as electoral boundary commissions and election commissions. He represented Democracy Watch in Frank v. Canada on the right to vote of non-resident citizens.