Elections in Tumbra
As a federal parliamentary republic, elections in Tumbra are held on two levels - on the federal and state level. The right to vote is entrenched in the Constitution of Tumbra, and all citizens above 18 are eligible to vote. Compulsory voting is in place in Tumbra, enacted in 1921, as a means of increasing the level of participation in the democratic process. Elections for the President of Tumbra and Vice President of Tumbra occur every six years, held concurrently with those for the Senate of Tumbra, the upper house of the Federal Parliament of Tumbra. Elections for the House of Representatives of Tumbra, the lower house, have no fixed date. However, the term limit of the House is forty-eight months from the date of the previous first session of Parliament.
On the state level, the twenty-five State Parliaments also have a four-year term limit, but have no fixed election dates. The Local Government Authorities' election dates are synchronised up with that of state parliaments, with a major difference.
Presidential Elections[edit]
Presidential elections occur every six years. The President and Vice President are elected in a two-round system, with all candidates entering the first round, before the top two candidates enter the second round, held two weeks later. Should a candidate get a majority of the votes cast in the first round, the second round is not held and the new President is proclaimed. The first round of the election takes place on the first Friday of February, with the second round, if it takes place, on the second Friday of February. Both election dates are federal holidays. The President is sworn in on the third of March of that same year.
To be able to run for President, a prospective candidate must get at least 500 signatures from at least thirteen of the twenty-five states to be allowed to run; nominations typically close on the last day of November the previous year. Candidates representing a political party typically go through a primary process to determine the nominees for President and Vice President beforehand.
The Vice President is elected on the same ticket as the President.
Senate Elections[edit]
Senate elections occur on the same date as the first round of the Presidential elections. Two hundred Senators are elected from the twenty-five states, with each state sending between six and twelve Senators to the Senate. Each state determines its Senators through party-list proportional representation. To be a Senator, the candidate must be at least twenty-five years old, be a citizen of good standing and reside in the state that they wish to represent.
Unlike the House, the Senate is not dissolved before an election; the new Senate is, according to clause 97 of the Constitution, convened on the same day that the new President and Vice President takes office, which is the third of March. Therefore, the Senate is not dissolved in the typical fashion that the House is; instead, it sits until the date of the election, at which time it is dissolved. Therefore, the Senate sits throughout the election campaign for the next Senate, with only a three-week break in between the election of a new Senate and the convening of a new Senate. Reform has been proposed to allow the new Senate to sit earlier; however as of 2021 there have been no plans to amend the Constitution to move the convening date of a new Senate earlier.
House Elections[edit]
Elections for the House typically take place every four years; however, the Prime Minister is allowed to dissolve the House beforehand and call for an early election. Other circumstances in which an early election may be called include the House voting to dissolve itself; and the failure of the House to elect a Prime Minister. Currently, six hundred and fifty Members of Parliament are elected through single-member constituencies, with reapportionments occurring every ten years. Any campaign for a federal election can last from a month to four months.
State Parliament Elections[edit]
Similarly to elections for the House of Representatives, State Parliaments are elected every four years. State Parliaments return between 40 (Bencoolen) and 180 (Napier) MPs.
Local Government Elections[edit]
The 147 Local Government Authorities are elected through open-list proportional representation, with one representative for every 10,000 voters. The usage of open-list proportional representation allows for a independent politicians to be elected by garnering enough votes to be elected, so long as the number of votes for said independent candidate crosses the threshold.
All councils are elected at the same time as state governments - whenever the state government is dissolved, the councils are dissolved as well, unless the state election happens within eighteen months of the last one. In that case, the councils are not dissolved and are granted a term extension until the end of the new state parliament's term. No such extension is allowed for a newly-elected state government should it dissolve within the next eighteen months, however, making the theoretical maximum length of a council's term five-and-a-half years, instead of the four years found in other forms of government. Should casual vacancies occur during the term of the Council, the next member on the party list will take the place of the departed member; should the departed member be an independent, or the party list run out of candidates, the seat will be left vacant until the next election. For this reason, most independents running for a place on local government authorities run in lists of two or three candidates. The threshold to be elected is also the same as the number of total votes divided by the number of seats; therefore, about 10,000 votes are needed to be elected as an independent. As of 2020, there are 8197 councilors in Tumbra.