One person, one vote

Look, I’m grateful that I have a vote.  But I’m about to gripe.  My vote, as a resident of the Australian Capital Territory, actually is worth less than most other Australian voters.  OK, so in the Senate we aren’t all that bad – but in many ways the Senate is designed to represent areas not population.  But it does cause a rather large anomaly.  In Tasmania there is one Senator for every 43,000 people – that number is 600,000 in NSW!  (ACT is in the middle of the list at 187,000 people per senator)  It’s in the House of Representatives that we are under-represented – and the House of Reps is more important!  We have two seats for a population of around 373,000.  So that’s about 187,000 people per seat.  As a general rule the number is around 150,000 for every other seat.  However, there are variances.  In Tasmania (maybe I should move), there are 102,000 people per seat – because of the ‘rule’ that each state will have a minimum of 5 seats.  It really annoys me.  Maybe I should just let it go…

Then again, one of my issues is that not only is my vote worth a little less, but our members have become slack and I'm not exactly sure what they are working for.  So it is statements like this that annoy me.  This being from our elected member:

"I campaigned as if Canberra was a marginal seat and since being elected I have worked as if it's a marginal seat,"

Grrrrrrrr............... (And I'm grateful that I can gripe!!!!!)