Parliament of Lower Columbia

The Parliament of Lower Columbia is the federal legislative branch of the Federal Kingdom of Lower Columbia, which meets in Parliament House in the national capital, Kendall. It is the supreme legislative body in Lower Columbia, nominally headed by the King, Zachary, but presided over on a day-to-day basis by the Lords of Parliament. It is bicameral: its upper house is the Council of States, and its lower house is the Federal Assembly.

By convention, the Assembly is the dominant house of Parliament; the King and the Council rarely oppose its will. The Council therefore normally takes the role of reviewing bills proposed by the Assembly, while the monarch provides the necessary royal assent to make bills law, as well as open and dissolve Parliament, and make the Royal Address every year. The current Parliament is the 76th since the federal constitution was ratified in 1715, having been opened by King Zachary on February 16, 2015.

Council of States
The Council of States is Parliament's upper house. It consists of seven Councilors from each state, who are elected by the state assemblies after they come to power. By law, state legislatures must elect Councilors in roughly the same proportions as the political parties that they are composed of, using the single transferable vote system. Councilors must be at least 30 years of age under the national constitution, although most Councilors are usually much older than this minimum due to the practice of electing elder statesmen more often than junior statesmen to the Council.

Federal Assembly
The Federal Assembly is Parliament's lower house. Its members are apportioned to each state according to its population, with each Assemblyman currently representing about 100,000 people. Assemblymen are directly elected in their constituencies with instant-runoff voting: voters rank candidates on their ballots in order of preference, with the candidates receiving the fewest votes eliminated and their votes redistributed to the voters' next choices until a single winner emerges in each constituency. Assemblymen must be at least 25 years old as of Election Day, which is always a Wednesday.

History
Parliament came into being after the Constitution of Lower Columbia was ratified on February 4, 1715. Following the Constitution's ratification, the first Parliament was elected on September 30, 1715, when the citizens in each of Lower Columbia's three states elected new state governments (who subsequently elected the first Councilors of State) and the first Federal Assemblymen. This first Parliament began its first session on November 4, 1715, when King Edward opened a joint session.

As originally written, the Constitution named the King as the Council of States' president, while allowing both houses of Parliament to choose their other officers (including the Federal Assembly's speaker, an office which the Assembly created during its first session). However, King Michael I frequently missed sessions of the Council of States, often sending a palace aide to preside over the Council in his place. After Parliament exiled Michael I in 1799 and elected Brandon Bodker as the country's new king, members of both houses drafted a new constitutional amendment to eliminate the King's direct oversight of the Council and create new presiding officers over both houses. This amendment, which became the Third Amendment to the Constitution, established the Lords of Parliament &mdash; one over each house &mdash; and tasked the King with their appointment after each election.

The original text of the Constitution also set a maximum ratio of one Assemblyman per 10,000 residents in each state. This ratio remained unchanged until the annexation of Upper Columbia in 1862, which would have resulted in the Federal Assembly having over 600 members if the ratio remained unchanged. Since the Assembly's chamber in Parliament House could not accommodate more than 540 seats, Parliament passed a law reducing the ratio of Assemblymen to one per 20,000 residents. However, this law did not impose any upper limit on the Assembly's size, so when the states acquired from the Republic of Gudland elected their first Assemblymen in the 1887 election, the Assembly grew by 117 members, to a total of 597 members. Besides making the Assembly chamber rather cramped for the next three years, most of the new Assemblymen belonged to the new Progressive Party, giving that party its first Parliamentary majority and upsetting the previous balance of power. To reduce the Assembly's size to a more manageable number and ensure that it would never again exceed a comfortable size, Parliament passed (and the people ratified) the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. This amendment fixed the maximum size of the Assembly at 540 members and required the population of Assembly districts to increase by 20,000 whenever the national population would otherwise force the Assembly to have more than 540 members.

Officers
Each house of Parliament is presided over by its Lord, who is appointed by the King after each election and is typically the leader of the largest political party represented in that chamber. Exceptions only occur when the same party holds a plurality of seats in at least one chamber and is part of a government coalition, in which case the King appoints the leader of the coalition's second-largest party as the Lord of the Council of States, to ensure that coalition members are adequately represented in the government. Both Lords of Parliament serve as the speakers of their respective chambers and are thus responsible for regulating their chamber's meetings.

In addition, the government-forming majority in each chamber elects one of its members to serve as the Government Leader in that chamber; the largest minority party in each house similarly elects one of its members as the Opposition Leader in that house. The Government Leader in a chamber serves as its temporary speaker when the Lord of that chamber is unable to attend meetings, and is typically the most senior member of a government party in that chamber. Often, when a coalition forms the government, the Government Leader in the Assembly belongs to the same party as the Lord of the Council, and the Government Leader in the Council belongs to the same party as the Lord of the Assembly. Government coalitions thus far have only consisted of two parties, but if three parties were to form a coalition, it is likely that a member of the smallest government party would be elected the Government Leader in the Council, due to the Council's lesser power in legislative matters.

Term
Constitutionally, no Parliament can sit for longer than five years before being dissolved prior to a general election. However, few Parliaments have ever been allowed to expire in this manner; most have been dissolved early. All parliamentary terms begin 40 days after the last general election, when the King formally opens Parliament, and continue until the King dissolves Parliament. A new election follows four or six weeks after Parliament is dissolved, depending on the circumstances of its dissolution (as outlined in the article on elections in Lower Columbia), and the cycle repeats. The timing of elections may be determined by the Lords of Parliament and approved by the King, if the former believe that they have an advantage in calling early elections. However, if the government loses the confidence of the Assembly &mdash; either via a motion of no confidence or a loss of supply &mdash; the Lords of Parliament are required to ask the King to dissolve Parliament and call for early elections, which take place six weeks after Parliament is dissolved.

Regardless of its duration, a Parliament's term is conventionally divided into sessions. These sessions are no longer than one year and help to organize a Parliament's acts chronologically. Depending on when a Parliament's first session begins, sessions may be separated by a recess of up to four weeks, or by only one weekend; longer recesses typically span either the Christmas or Easter seasons, when Parliament never meets. In any event, sessions are formally terminated by an adjournment to recess, with the date when MPs are to reconvene specified in the motion to adjourn. The next parliamentary session then begins with the King making his Royal Address to a joint meeting of the houses of Parliament, after which each house returns to its respective chamber.