When Nationals supporters in the WA's north cast their state election votes nine months ago, few would have realised their ballot could help elect a Greens candidate ahead of a sitting Liberal minister.

And not many Labor backers in the Wheatbelt would ever have even dreamed their vote could help elect a conservative MP who advocates for substantial changes to WA's gun laws.

Similarly, people who backed micro parties with appealing names — like the Animal Justice Party or the Daylight Saving Party — might have been shocked to know their votes could put an anti-fluoride campaigner into a hugely powerful position in State Parliament.

Those situations might sound stunning, but the reality is WA voters have been tricked for many years into assisting parties they never would have dreamed of supporting.

It raises some important questions; is our electoral system broken? And, if it is, what does that mean for our democracy?

WA voters have been helping parties they never would have voted for. ( ABC News: Andrew O'Connor )

How the system is 'gamed'

Some experts see the system we use to elect Upper House MPs as fatally flawed, arguing its results do not actually reflect what the public voted for.

At the heart of many of those complaints is the "group voting ticket" mechanism, which allows WA electors to cast their Upper House votes by numbering one box, above a line, for their favourite candidate.

Its simplicity is overwhelmingly appealing to voters, very few of whom bother to follow the alternative of numbering every one of dozens of boxes below the line to retain full control of their votes.

But it means political parties have a huge influence over where those votes will ultimately end up with minimal accountability, something which can lead to "gaming" of the system and result in people being elected to Parliament despite earning a miniscule share of support in their own right.

Federal Parliament voted to abandon the group ticket system for the Senate with those concerns in mind, and prominent election analyst William Bowe believes it is time for WA to follow suit.

"We still have an electoral system where you can get a very long way with good preference deals," he said.

"They need to take a step back, have a think and come up with a quite comprehensive package of reform."

'Perverse' result after landslide win

But problems with group voting tickets are far from the only issue which many see with the system we use to elect MPs to the "house of review".

Progressives have long bemoaned the fact that regional WA, where conservatives tend to dominate, has as many Upper House seats as the city despite more than three-quarters of the State's population living in Perth.

Labor's annihilation of the Lower House did not translate into the Upper House. ( ABC News: Robert Koenig-Luck )

Advocates insist that discrepancy is necessary for regional WA to maintain any real influence on the Government that leads it.

"I am very cautious of Labor bringing a bill to the Parliament to rip up the Legislative Council, that will only be to the detriment of country people," WA Nationals electoral affairs spokesman Martin Aldridge said.

But Mr Bowe said voters only needed to look at the results of the most recent election to see how flawed the existing system is.

In the Lower House, Labor inflicted an electoral annihilation — taking 20 seats off the incumbent Government, defeating scores of big names and winning in a landslide.

But in the Upper House, Labor is so short of a majority that it has to reach out to people it would consider its political enemies — and win the support of at least one conservative-minded party — to get virtually anything done.

"When you have a really massive landslide like Labor enjoyed in March, then it is extremely perverse for the mandate that party has not to be represented in Parliament," Mr Bowe said.

The consequences for the Government became abundantly obvious this year when its gold royalty hike was blocked, another budget savings measure was also vetoed and its highly-touted "no body, no parole" laws were heavily delayed.

Minor parties defend the system

Labor believes it is being stopped from doing the job punters overwhelmingly elected it to do, by an Upper House that is refusing to accept its mandate.

But that is a charge the minor party MPs who have found themselves holding enormous power in this parliament strongly reject.

Rick Mazza says the existing system is working. ( ABC News: Jessica Strutt )

"It is not like the Upper House members are being obstructionist, their job is to look at legislation as it comes through," crossbench MP Rick Mazza said.

"I think the system works quite well."

What, if anything, the Government will actually do about its gripes with the existing system remains to be seen and the responsible minister was giving little away.

"We don't currently have any plans to change it [the Upper House voting system], but we're open to listening to community concerns," Electoral Affairs Minister Bill Johnston said.

But every time its wishes are stymied by the Upper House between now and the next election, Labor's appetite to change the way WA voters elect people to Parliament is only likely to strengthen.