The (federal) Islamic Republic of Pakistan will elect its National Assembly on February 18, 2008. Georgetown Democracy & Governance students and faculty are en route to monitor the vote.

Originally scheduled for January 8, officials postponed the election after PPP leader Benazir Bhutto’s assassination on December 27, 2007.

Assuming the vote is free and fair, 342 National Assembly members will be elected under a parallel or MMM system.33 60 seats are reserved to women, and 10 are reserved to minority groups.33

Single-member districts are apportioned to each province by population. It seems like The proportional tier relates only to the election of women and minorities.33 Seats are allocated to those groups from each province in proportion to their respective parties’ province-wide seat shares.33

If this is correct, 242 seats are elected under FPP rules, and the 70 remaining seats make up the proportional tier.

100 senators are indirectly elected by territorial and provincial assemblies using the single transferable vote. Terms are six years, staggered.3

  1. IFES calls it list PR, and IDEA, via ACE Project, calls it parallel. Since parallel systems usually include a list PR component, I’m going with IDEA on this one.333
  2. The “minority” quota is according to IFES. The Pakistan Election Commission refers instead to “technocrats.”333
  3. See Pakistan Election Commission for district magnitudes and quotas.333
  4. Election Laws, Vol. I, pp 20-21 of PDF document, “Number of seats in the National Assembly,” http://www.ecp.gov.pk/content/docs/volume1.pdf333

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