The Australian electoral system comprises the laws and processes used for the election of members of the Australian Parliament and is governed primarily by the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. The system presently has a number of distinctive features including compulsory enrolment, compulsory voting, majority-preferential instant-runoff voting in single-member seats to elect the lower house, the House of Representatives, and the use of the single transferable vote proportional representation system to elect the upper house, the Senate.
Electoral systems of the Australian states and territories are broadly similar to the electoral system used in federal elections in Australia.
The House of Assembly, or Lower House, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of Tasmania in Australia. The other is the Legislative Council or Upper House. It sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Hobart.
The Canadian electoral system is based on a parliamentary system of government, modelled on that of the United Kingdom.
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is the independent federal agency in charge of organising, conducting and supervising federal Australian elections, by-elections and referendums.
In Australia, electoral districts for the Australian House of Representatives are called divisions or more commonly referred to as electorates or seats. There are currently 151 single-member electorates for the Australian House of Representatives.
In Australia, one vote, one value is a democratic principle, applied in electoral laws governing redistributions of electoral divisions of the House of Representatives. The principle calls for all electoral divisions to have the same number of enrolled voters, within a specified percentage of variance. The electoral laws of the Commonwealth for the House of Representatives and all states follow the principle with some exceptions. The principle does not apply to the Senate, as each state is entitled under the constitution to the same number of senators irrespective of the population of the state.
The Parliament of South Australia is the bicameral legislature of the Australian state of South Australia. It consists of the 47-seat House of Assembly and the 22-seat Legislative Council. General elections are held every 4 years, with all of the lower house and half of the upper house filled at each election. It follows a Westminster system of parliamentary government with the executive branch required to both sit in parliament and hold the confidence of the House of Assembly. The parliament is based at Parliament House on North Terrace in the state capital of Adelaide.
In the United Kingdom (UK), each of the electoral areas or divisions called constituencies elects one member to the House of Commons.
BC-STV is the proposed voting system recommended by the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform in October 2004 for use in British Columbia, and belongs to the single transferable vote family of voting systems. BC-STV was supported by a majority of the voters in a referendum held in 2005 but the government had legislated that it would not be bound by any vote lower than 60 percent in favour. Because of the strong majority support for BC-STV, the government elected to stage a second referendum in 2009, but with increased public funding for information campaigns to better inform the electorate about the differences between the existing and proposed systems. The leadership of both the "yes" side and the "no" side were assigned by the government. The proposal was rejected with 60.9 percent voting against, vs. 39.1 percent in favour, in the 2009 vote.
Since 1970, the South Australian House of Assembly has consisted of 47 single-member electoral districts consisting of approximately the same number of enrolled voters. The district boundaries are regulated by the State Electoral Office, according to the requirements of the South Australian Constitution and are subject to mandatory redistributions by the South Australian Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission in order to respond to changing demographics.
Elections to the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly were held on Saturday, 4 March 1989. This was the first direct election by voters in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) for their own legislative body.
Taylor is a single-member electoral district for the South Australian House of Assembly. This district is named after Doris Irene Taylor MBE, a leading force in the founding of Meals on Wheels, and Labor activist. Taylor is a 246.2 km2 semi-urban electorate in Adelaide's outer northern suburbs and market gardens on the Adelaide Northern plains. A large portion of the district lives in the western half of the City of Playford and it is regarded as a safe Labor seat. It now includes the suburbs and townships of Andrews Farm, Angle Vale, Bolivar, Buckland Park, Davoren Park, Edinburgh, Edinburgh North, Elizabeth North, Eyre, Macdonald Park, Munno Para West, Penfield, Penfield Gardens, Riverlea Park, Smithfield, Smithfield Plains, St Kilda, Virginia, and Waterloo Corner.
In Australia, a redistribution is the process of redrawing the boundaries of electoral divisions for the House of Representatives arising from changes in population and changes in the number of representatives. There is no redistribution for the Senate as each State constitutes a division, though with multiple members. The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), an independent statutory authority, oversees the apportionment and redistribution process for federal divisions, taking into account a number of factors. Politicians, political parties and the public may make submissions to the AEC on proposed new boundaries, but any interference with their deliberations is considered a serious offence.
The 2008 Western Australian state election was held on Saturday 6 September 2008 to elect 59 members to the Legislative Assembly and 36 members to the Legislative Council. The incumbent centre-left Labor Party government, in power since the 2001 election and led since 25 January 2006 by Premier Alan Carpenter, was defeated by the centre-right Liberal Party opposition, led by Opposition Leader Colin Barnett since 6 August 2008.
Elizabeth is a single-member electoral district for the South Australian House of Assembly. It first existed from 1970 to 2006, when its boundaries were moved south and east and it was renamed to Little Para. The 2016 redistribution moved it further north and renamed it back to Elizabeth for the 2018 election. The district is in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, and named for the suburb of Elizabeth.
The 2014 South Australian state election elected members to the 53rd Parliament of South Australia on 15 March 2014, to fill all 47 seats in the House of Assembly and 11 of 22 seats in the Legislative Council. The 12-year-incumbent Australian Labor Party (SA) government, led by Premier Jay Weatherill, won its fourth consecutive four-year term in government, a record 16 years of Labor government, defeating the opposition Liberal Party of Australia (SA), led by Opposition Leader Steven Marshall.
The 2018 South Australian state election to elect members to the 54th Parliament of South Australia was held on 17 March 2018. All 47 seats in the House of Assembly or lower house, whose members were elected at the 2014 election, and 11 of 22 seats in the Legislative Council or upper house, last filled at the 2010 election, were contested. The record-16-year-incumbent Australian Labor Party (SA) government led by Premier Jay Weatherill was seeking a fifth four-year term, but was defeated by the opposition Liberal Party of Australia (SA), led by Opposition Leader Steven Marshall. Nick Xenophon's new SA Best party unsuccessfully sought to obtain the balance of power.
The 2022 South Australian state election was held on 19 March 2022 to elect members to the 55th Parliament of South Australia. All 47 seats in the House of Assembly, and half the seats in the Legislative Council were up for re-election.
Apportionment by country describes the practices used in various democratic countries around the world for partitioning seats in the parliament among districts or parties. See apportionment (politics) for the general principles and issues related to apportionment.
