giving him a quota and the fifth Senate seat. Ridgeway's surplus was then distributed, and 96% of his votes went to Forshaw, thus giving him a quota and the sixth seat. Oldfield was the last remaining unsuccessful candidate. Provision for exhausted votes has been made in the current arrangements by providing that the last candidate does not require a quota, just a majority of the remaining votes. However it leaves the possibility that the election could fail, if the number of exhausted votes exceeded two quotas, making it impossible for the second last candidate to reach a quota. With above the line voting running at around 95%, this possibility is extremely remote. A final point needs to be explained. It was noted above that when a candidate polls more votes than the quota, their surplus vote is distributed to other candidates. Thus, in the example given above, Hutchins's surplus was 909,698, or 1,446,231 (his primary vote) minus 536,533 (the quota). It may be asked: which 909,698 of Hutchins's 1,446,231 primary votes are distributed? Are they chosen at random from among his votes? In fact they are all distributed, but at less than their full value. Since 909,698 is 62.9% of 1,446,231, each of Hutchins's votes is transferred to other candidates as 62.9% of a vote: each vote is said to have a transfer value of 0.629. This avoids any possibility of an unrepresentative sample of his votes being transferred. After each count the candidate's progressive total is rounded down to the nearest whole number. This means that a small number of votes are lost by fractionation in the final count. If at the end of the Senate count the two candidates remaining have an equal number of votes, the Australian Electoral Officer for the state shall select one at random. Senate casual vacancies If a senator's seat becomes vacant mid-term, through disqualification, resignation, death or other cause, the legislature of the relevant state or territory chooses a replacement senator. A senator may resign by tendering their resignation to the President of the Senate or to the Governor-General, as required by section 19 of the constitution. A resignation is not effective until it is tendered in writing to the President or Governor-General. Double dissolutions Under the Australian Constitution, the House of Representatives and the Senate generally have equal legislative powers (the only exception being that appropriation (supply) bills must originate in