Electoral system for national legislature

Law no. 6/2006 on the Election of the National Parliament with amendments, accessed: 23 October 2019

2006 Law 6 on the Election of the National Parliament

Article 9: Single constituency

There shall be only one single constituency in the election of the National Parliament, corresponding to the entire national territory, headquartered in Dili.

Article 10: Number of members of Parliament

The total number of Members of Parliament shall be 65.

Article 11: Method of election

Members of Parliament shall be elected through plurinominal lists, presented by political parties or party coalitions, and each voting citizen shall be entitled to one single vote in the list.

Article 12: Organization of the lists

1. Lists proposed for the election by a political party or a party coalition must contain 65 effective candidates as well as no less than 25 alternate candidates.

2. Candidates of each list shall be considered to be sorted in accordance with the sequence of their respective candidacy statement.

3. Lists of effective and alternate candidates must include at least one woman per every group of four candidates, under pain of rejection.

Article 13: Election criterion

1. Conversion of votes into seats shall observe the proportional representation system in accordance with the Hondt highest average method, and shall comply with the following rules:

a)  The total number of votes received for each list shall be counted separately;

b)  The number of votes counted for each list shall be divided, successively, by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., and the quotients shall be sorted in a descending order, forming a series with as many terms as the number of seats allocated to the single constituency;

c)  The seats shall be attributed to the lists corresponding to the terms of the series established according to the rule provided for in paragraph b), and each list shall receive the number of seats corresponding to the number of terms in the series;

d)  Where there is only one seat left to distribute, and the next terms of the series are equal and belong to different lists, the seat shall be attributed to the list with the least number of votes.

2. Lists obtaining less than 3% (three percent) of the total of votes shall not be entitled to attribution of seats.

Source: Compendium of the 2012 Elections in Timor Leste, UNMIT and UNDP

Closed list PR using d’Hondt method