How does Canadas electoral system violate the right to vote?
Section 3 of the Charter protects the right of every citizen of Canada “to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly”. This, of course, means more than simply the right to mark an X on a ballot and put it in a box – otherwise, there would be no obligation to count the votes at all. They could be discarded, or count for nothing. At a minimum, the right to vote in the Charter places an obligation on the government to ensure that votes are counted in a way that is consistent with the democratic nature of our system of government. As the Supreme Court has said in earlier decisions, the right to vote means that the votes of citizens must count equally, as far as possible, so that each citizen has a parity of voting power in comparison with others. The Court recognized that sometimes this is not possible, since in some rural ridings the population is widely dispersed and representatives have a harder time ensuring that their constituents interests ar
