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 75th since the federal constitution was ratified in 1715, having been opened by King Zachary on November 5, 2011.

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 the last Wednesday of every fourth September.