Electoral system for national legislature
Lebanon
Article 1: The voting system and number of MPs
The Lebanese Parliament consists of 128 members, whose term of office is four years, elected on the basis of the proportional system of which the voting shall take place in public, in secret and in a single session.
Article 2: The Parliamentary seats and electoral districts
1 – The number of Parliamentary seats and their distribution across sects according to electoral districts shall be determined according to the attached appendix to this law (Annex 1). The nomination for these seats shall be based on this annex and the appendix shall be considered an integral part of this law.
2 – All voters in the constituency shall vote for the candidates in their respective districts.
Article 98: The proportional representation
1 – The number of MPs taken from each list will be determined by the percentage of votes each list gains.
2 – The percentage of the seats earned by a list will be determined by the number of voters in each electoral district relative to the number of seats.
3 – Lists which do not receive a high enough percentage of votes to earn a seat will be eliminated and votes will be counted again based on the lists that met the threshold percentage to earn a seat.
4 – The remaining seats will be distributed to the eligible lists that gained the largest percentage of votes remaining from the first division. This process shall be repeated in the same manner until all seats are distributed. If one seat remains and two eligible lists have the same percentage, the seat will be awarded to the list that gained the largest number of seats. In the event that the two lists have the same percentage for the available seat, the seat will be given to the list whose candidate received the highest number of preferential votes. In the event that two candidates from two different lists receive the same percentage of votes, the candidate from the list which received more overall preferential votes will earn the seat. And so on.
5 – After it is determined how many seats each list will be assigned, the candidates will be sorted from first to last, based on the percentage of preferential votes each candidate earned in their respective administrative district. The percentage of preferential votes for each candidate will be determined by the number of overall preferential votes cast in their administrative district. In the event that two candidates receive the same number of preferential votes, the candidate who is older will advance. If the candidates receive the same of preferential votes and are the same age, the winner will be determined by a “coin-toss.”
6 – The distribution of seats for the winning candidates will be determined with the highest vote getters from the top of each list. The first seat will be allocated to the candidate who receives the highest percentage of preferential votes and the second seat to the second-ranked candidate on the list and so on.
7 – The seats will be distributed based on the following:
– Seats in each district will be filled by winning candidates for a certain sect until the quota is complete. Once the quota is complete, the candidates who did not earn a seat will be eliminated.
– If a list has not been completely filled with the specified quota and the distribution process reaches a candidate belonging to a list that has fulfilled its quota of seats, the seat will be passed on to the next eligible candidate.
