Electoral system for national legislature

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Election Law (2001, last amended 2022) [Unofficial consolidated text], accessed 25 October 2022

Article 9.1 (1) The House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH shall consist of 42 members, 28 of whom shall be directly elected by voters registered to vote for the territory of the Federation of BiH, and 14 of whom shall be directly elected by voters registered to vote for the territory of the Republika Srpska. The mandate of members of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH shall be four years.

(2) Of 28 members who shall be directly elected by voters registered to vote for the territory of the Federation of BiH, 21 shall be elected from multi-member constituencies under the proportional representation formula set forth in Article 9.5 of this law, and seven shall be compensatory mandates elected from the territory of the Federation as a whole according to Article 9.6 of this Law.

(3) Of 14 members who shall be directly elected by voters registered to vote for the territory of the Republika Srpska, nine shall be elected from multi-member constituencies under the proportional representation formula set forth in Article 9.5 of this law, and five shall be compensatory mandates elected from the territory of the Republika Srpska as a whole according to Article 9.6 of this Law.

(4) A voter shall have one ballot for the proportional representation mandates in the multi-member constituency for which the voter is registered.

Article 9.5 (1) Mandates are allocated in each constituency in the following manner: For each political party and coalition, the total number of valid votes received by that political party or coalition shall be divided by 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, et seq., as long as necessary for the allocation in question. The numbers resulting from this series of divisions shall be the “quotients”. The number of votes for an independent candidate is the quotient for that candidate.

(2) The quotients shall be arranged in order from the highest quotient to the lowest quotient. Mandates shall be distributed, in order, to the highest quotient until all the constituency mandates for the body have been distributed.

(3) Political parties, coalitions, lists of independent candidates and independent candidates cannot participate in the allocation of mandates if they do not win more than 3% of the total number of valid ballots in a constituency.

Article 9.6 Compensatory mandates shall be allocated in the following manner:

a) Only political parties and coalitions, which won more than 3% of the total number of valid ballots for the territory of the entity for which the compensatory list is made, may take part in the distribution of compensatory mandates. First, the total number of mandates for the legislative body to be allocated for the territory of the respective Entity, reduced by the number of mandates won by independent candidates, is distributed according to the formula set forth in Article 9.5 of this Law.

b) From the number of mandates a list of a political party or coalition has won according to this procedure the number of mandates won by the same party or coalition, according to the procedure set forth in Article 9.5 of this Law, is deducted. The remaining number is the number of compensatory mandates the list wins.

c) If a political party or coalition receives a negative number of mandates according to the procedure set forth in point b), the political party or coalition keeps the mandates won in the constituencies, but does not receive any compensatory mandates. In case one or more lists get a negative number of mandates, the mandates to be distributed according to the procedure of this article is decreased correspondingly to preserve the correct number of mandates in the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH elected from the territory of the respective Entity.