The Constitution Alteration (Democratic Elections) Bill 1974, was an unsuccessful proposal to alter the Australian Constitution to make population instead of electors, the basis of determining the average size of electorates in each state. It applied not only to the House of Representatives, but also to the various state Legislative Assemblies, requiring the use demographical population size to ensure democratic elections. This was intended to replace alternative methods of distributing seats, such as geographical size, with instead the population of states and territories. It was put to voters for approval in a referendum held on 18 May 1974. Background The referendum was held in conjunction to the 1974 Federal Election on 18 May 1974. After the rejection of 6 Bills by the Opposition-controlled Senate, a double dissolution election was called from the 1974 Federal Election. The incumbent Labor Party led by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam defeated the opposition Liberal-Country coalition led by Billy Snedden. While this was the case, the Liberal-Country Party Opposition retained control of the Senate. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam had been an active prime minister since his party's victory in the 1972 election, and his government enforced several socially progressive reforms and policies over its first term. However, Whitlam's government suffered through the 1973 oil crisis and the 1973-75 recession and received a hostile reception from the Coalition, with the last Senate election held in 1970. The proposal represented goals by the Labor leadership to strengthen the representative democratic foundations of Australia's political system by enshrining proportional representation in Australia, also referred to as one vote, one value. It was intended to prevent the gerrymandering system then in place in Queensland (Bjelkemander), South Australia (Playmander) and Western Australia. These systems pro-rural electoral malapportionment Question The 1974 Australian referendum (Democratic Elections) posed the question: “An Act to alter the Constitution so as to ensure that the members of the House of Representatives and of the parliaments of the states are chosen directly and democratically by the people. Do you approve the proposed law?” Results Public debate There has been significant debate about the results of the 1974 Australian referendum and the implications of it being unsuccessful. The failure of the Democratic Elections referendum proposal to reach a double majority raised questions about the strength of democracy in Australia’s parliamentary and electoral systems. The proposal to enable people rather than geographic size as the determinant for the size of