Number of tiers

Republic of Moldova, Electoral Code (No. 1381-XIII of 21.11.1997, last amended by Law No. 302 of 30.11.2018), [unofficial translation], accessed 14 February 2019

Article 79. Parliamentary Elections

(1) The Parliament shall be elected for a four-year term by a universal, equal, direct, secret and freely expressed suffrage.

(2) Parliamentary elections shall be conducted based on a mixed voting system (proportional and majoritarian) in one national constituency and within Single Member Constituencies.

(3) Thus, 50 members of Parliament shall be elected in the national constituency on the basis of proportional representation, and 51 members of Parliament shall be elected within Single Member Constituencies by majority vote, one member from each constituency.

See also articles 95-99 for further details of setting the thresholds, electing the members in the single member districts, and assigning seats in the national constituency.

The Electoral Code was amended in 2017 to replace the proportional electoral system with the mixed (parallel) system, in which 50 seats are elected proportionally from the closed party lists and another 51 from single-member districts using FPTP. Parliamentary Elections held on 24 February 2019 were still held under this mixed system. However, the Parliament of the Republic voted to change the mixed voting system and reintroduced the former proportional representation system in July 2019. The new proportional representation system was enacted in August 2019 and will be used in the future Parliamentary Elections.