House of Representatives of the Caldan Union

The House of Representatives of the Caldan Union is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of the Caldan Union, which also comprised the Sovereign and the Senate. The House of Representatives meets in Parliament House, a large, Gothic Revival Palace on the opposite side of St. Andrew's Park from St. Andrew's Palace.

The House of Representatives is a democratically elected body whose members are generally known as members of Parliament or MPs, although they are also sometimes addressed as Representatives. There are currently 880 members in the House. Members are elected by preferential vote from single member constituencies. Once elected, MPs, hold office until Parliament is dissolved unless they resign or die in office. Parliament may not sit for more than three years and is normally dissolved before the expiry of its term.

History

The first election to the House of Representatives was held on 25 July 1842, over a year after the creation of the Constitution of the Caldan Union. The new Parliament consisted of the Sovereign, House of Lords, and House of Representatives. The House of Representatives met in a chamber created for that purpose in the new Parliament House. The first elected House of Representatives did not have organised political parties with most members running on their local reputations. However, there were at least three distinct political tendencies throughout the Caldan Union during this first election. Caldans who had been proponents of the Constitution tended to describe themselves as Jacobites and to see the Constitution as the vindication of a theory of Jacobite history focusing on the causes of various disenfranchised groups against a Whig oligarchy. They tended to want to strengthen popular government and firmly establish representative government. Caldans who had opposed the Constitution tended to call themselves Royalists, claiming a straightforward Absolutist legacy for Jacobitism and deriding other interpretations as distortions of history. While they accepted the constitution when it came, this group sought to interpret the authority of the elected govenment narrowly and provide as much support for the King as possible. The third group consisted of Localists, representatives who wanted to maximise the provincial authority. By the next election, 20 January 1848, most Royalists had formed the Conservative Party and most Jacobites the Reform Party. The House of Representatives and Caldan politics and the Caldan constitution have evolved over the years. The maximum term has shrunk from seven to three years. Universal suffrage, preferential voting, and proportional districts have been introduced. The adjoining House of Lords has been replaced with a Senate. The parties have also changed with the National and Labour Parties now dominating.

Members and Electoral Districts

The House of Representatives has 880 members, each of whom represents an electoral district, generally known as a constituency. The constitution specifies a minimum of 100 constituencies and a maximum of 1 000. Seats are divided among the provinces proportionally to population excepting that each province must have at least one representative. At present, Borealia, Dana, Hipolis, Sannginivut, and Ughan have only representative. Anata has the most seats with 242. The next two largest provinces, Arcadia and Alekthos, have 156 and 153 respectively. It has often been noted that the three most populous provinces combined constitute a majority in the House of Representatives. However, they also constitue a majority of the nation's population and are politically and culturally very distinct. It is in the five smallest provinces than the individual voter is disproportionately represented.