The election was called earlier than expected by Alan Carpenter, who requested the Governor to dissolve parliament on 7 August 2008.

The Burke Labor government (1983–1988), with the conditional support of the National Party, managed to achieve limited reform—through the Acts Amendment (Electoral Reform) Act 1987—in increasing the metropolitan quota from 29 to 34, redesigning the Legislative Council (or Upper House) into a Senate-style body with six uneven multi-member seats filled by a system of STV proportional representation, and creating a permanent, funded Electoral Commission as a body fully independent from Parliament and the executive.

Following Labor's win at the 2001 election, the new premier Geoff Gallop and attorney-general Jim McGinty were committed to implementing 'one vote, one value'.

[9] Change occurred, however, when the Liberal Party, which staunchly opposed the reform, failed to preselect one of their North Metropolitan MLCs, Alan Cadby, in a bid to get Peter Collier into the Legislative Council at the 2005 election.

[10][11] Cadby resigned from the Liberal Party and completed his term as an Independent, consenting to Labor's electoral legislation with some amendments.

On 20 May 2005, just before newly elected upper-house members were to take their places, the Electoral Amendment and Repeal Act 2005 (No.1 of 2005) passed.

[12] The passage of the Electoral Reform (Electoral Funding) Act 2006 into law on 26 October 2006 means that, for the first time, candidates, parties and Legislative Council groups will be able to receive public funding based on their performance in terms of votes at the election as well as a refund of their nomination deposit if they receive over 4% of the primary vote, as is the case in several other states and in federal elections.

The Western Australian Legislative Council, sometimes referred to as the 'upper house', consists of 36 members, with 6 elected from each of 6 multi-member regions (also known as constituencies).

Firstly, there is insufficient time to conduct a full distribution of voter preferences in those Legislative Assembly seats that require it.

The official count for all Assembly districts does not commence till after the closing date for postal votes which is the Thursday following the election.

[23] The high proportion of early votes cast in this election along with the large number of absentee votes cast on election day (caused by elector confusion arising from the recent changes to electoral boundaries) was expected to delay the determination of final results, particularly in closely fought seats.

Ticket votes are sorted (ticket/non-ticket/informal) then manually counted, while preferences on non-ticket ballots are entered into a computer database under the scrutiny of party officials.