How is the House of Representatives elected?
Australia has 148 electorates that each elect a single member to the House of Representatives, using the preferential voting system. Most electorates have between 80,000 and 90,000 voters. Electorates have similar numbers of voters because each electorate gets exactly one vote in Parliament. It means that all Australians have roughly equal representation. But it does mean that more than half of all seats come from New South Wales and Victoria because more people live there. How is the Senate elected? There are only eight electorates for the Senate the six States and two Territories. These electorates are much bigger than those for the House of Representatives but each State elects twelve Senators and each Territory elects two. Notice that New South Wales with nearly 3,900,000 voters has as many senators as Tasmania with 320,000 voters (less than one-tenth as many as New South Wales). One of the reasons for creating the Senate was to give people in the less populated States more of a sa
