Primary school factsheet - electorates

What are electorates?

Electorates are voting areas for elections.

The ACT is divided into 5 electorates for ACT Legislative Assembly elections. These are called:

• Brindabella
• Ginninderra
• Kurrajong
• Murrumbidgee and
• Yerrabi.

Your home will be in one of these electorates.

Each electorate has its own ballot paper. People who want to be elected are called candidates. Each candidate can only put their name on a ballot paper in one electorate.

How many members does each electorate have?

The ACT has multi-member electorates. This means that people vote for more than one person on election day. The people in each electorate are electing 5 people to become Members of the Legislative Assembly.

How big is an electorate?

The size of the electorates is set by an ACT law. This law has a maths formula used to work out how many voters shoulder live in each electorate. The law says that there should be about the same number of voters living in each electorate.

Redistributions

Before an election the ACT Electoral Commission checks how many people are living in each electorate. Sometimes the borders of an electorate will need to change to make sure it is the right size. This means that a suburb can be added or taken away from an electorate.

See the current electorates