Michael Pinto-Duschinsky
Michael Pinto-Duschinsky (born June 1943) is a Hungarian-born British scholar, political consultant and writer. He is a senior consultant on constitutional affairs for the think-tank Policy Exchange. Early life and family. Michael Pinto-Duschinsky was born in Hungary in June 1943, son of Eugene Duschinsky, rabbi (Av Beit Din) of Cape Town, South Africa, of a family that had been rabbis for seven generations. He graduated from Pembroke College, Oxford with first class honours in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and subsequently earned an MA in government at Cornell University and a D.Phil. in politics  at Oxford. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Cornell and at Nuffield College, Oxford. Career. In the 1970s, he was a member of the Oxford City Council and a fellow in politics at Merton College and Pembroke College, Oxford. Pinto-Duschinsky is a political consultant who has had a variety of positions advising organisations and governments on constitutional reform, the promotion of democracy, anti-corruption policies, and the funding of political parties and elections. He has been a senior research fellow at Brunel University. In 2011–12, he was a member of the Commission on a Bill of Rights set up  by the UK Coalition Government in 2010 to advise on reform of the 1998 Human Rights Act. In March 2012, he resigned after complaining that his views were being ignored. In 2012, he was appointed senior consultant on constitutional affairs for the think-tank Policy Exchange. Pinto-Duschinsky was a frequent contributor to the debate following the 2014 Lutfur Rahman voting affair, and estimated that there were over 6.5 million "ghost voters" in the electoral register. At least since 2006, Pinto-Duschinsky has been the president of the International Political Science Association's Political Finance and Corruption research committee. Since  2019, he has regularly published in The Article. Personal life. Pinto-Duschinsky married Shelley, the daughter of Dr Jerome David Markham, an educator who had graduated from Westhampton College, University of Richmond, and received a master of education degree from Harvard in 1969. Their son, David, is a management consultant, Labour politician and former special adviser to former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling. David is a former President of the Oxford Union and was the unsuccessful Labour parliamentary candidate for then-Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne's constituency of Tatton in 2015 and contested Hendon in 2019, where  he finished in second place.