Chapter 11 - Voting
and divisions
Majority voting
Section 23 of the
Constitution provides:
Questions arising in the Senate shall be determined by a
majority of votes, and each senator shall have one vote. The President shall in
all cases be entitled to a vote; and when the votes are equal the question shall pass in the negative.
This section clearly refers to a simple majority, that is, a majority
(half plus one) of the senators present and voting. A simple majority is
distinguished from an absolute majority in the Constitution by the
requirement in section 128 that a bill for amending the Constitution must be
passed by each House of the Parliament by an absolute
majority. An absolute majority is also prescribed for the passing of a bill at
a joint sitting of
the two Houses in the event of further disagreement between the Houses over the
bill after simultaneous dissolutions under section 57 of the
Constitution. An absolute majority is a majority of the whole number of
senators.
The provision in section 23 whereby the President has a deliberative
vote only and not a casting vote is designed to preserve the equality of
representation of the states. If the President had been
given a casting vote, the state represented by the senator who happened to be
President would have either an additional vote (if the casting vote were in
addition to a deliberative vote) or the power to decide issues when the other
senators were equally divided (if the President had a casting vote only).
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