[2] It applied not only to the House of Representatives, but also to the various state Legislative Assemblies, requiring the use demographical population size to ensure democratic elections.

This was intended to replace alternative methods of distributing seats, such as geographical size, with instead the population of states and territories.

However, Whitlam's government suffered through the 1973 oil crisis and the 1973-75 recession and received a hostile reception from the Coalition, with the last Senate election held in 1970.

The failure of the Democratic Elections referendum proposal to reach a double majority raised questions about the strength of democracy in Australia’s parliamentary and electoral systems.

[6] The lack of information and resources available preceding referendums have been discussed by political scholars as contributing to lower percentage of voter approval.