Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

, parliamentary elections are held every four years to elect the 113 members of the

Legislative Yuan The Legislative Yuan () is the unicameral legislature of the Republic of China (Taiwan) located in Taipei. The Legislative Yuan is composed of 113 members, who are directly elected for four-year terms by people of the Taiwan Area through a ...

, the unicameral legislature of Taiwan. The current electoral system was introduced in 2008. The constitutional amendments of 2005 extended term length from three to four years, reduced seat count from 225 to 113, and abolished the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repr ...

, originally another governmental organ equivalent to a chamber of parliament.

Current electoral system

Members are elected by

parallel voting In political science, parallel voting or superposition refers to the use of two or more Electoral system, electoral systems to elect different members of a legislature. More precisely, an electoral system is a superposition if it is a mixture o ...

: * 73 members by

first-past-the-post First-past-the-post (FPTP)—also called choose-one, first-preference plurality (FPP), or simply plurality—is a single-winner voting rule. Voters mark one candidate as their favorite, or First-preference votes, first-preference, and the cand ...

single-member district A single-member district or constituency is an electoral district represented by a single officeholder. It contrasts with a multi-member district, which is represented by multiple officeholders. In some countries, such as Australia and India ...

s * 6 by

single non-transferable voting Single non-transferable vote or SNTV is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote. Being a semi-proportional variant of first-past-the-post voting, under SNTV small parties, as well as large parties, have a chance t ...

in multi-member districts, exclusive for persons with indigenous status * 34 by

party-list proportional representation Party-list proportional representation (list-PR) is a system of proportional representation based on preregistered Political party, political parties, with each party being Apportionment (politics), allocated a certain number of seats Apportionm ...

voting

Single-member constituencies

The

delimitation Electoral boundary delimitation (or simply boundary delimitation or delimitation) is the drawing of boundaries of electoral precincts and related divisions involved in elections, such as Federated state, states, counties or other municipalities ...

of the single-member constituencies within the cities and counties was initially a major political issue in the early years, with bargaining between the government and the legislature. Of the 15 cities and counties to be partitioned (the ten others have only one seat), only seven of the districting schemes proposed by the CEC were approved in a normal way. The eight other schemes were decided by drawing lots: "Taipei and Taichung cities and Miaoli and Changhua counties will adopt the version suggested by the CEC, while Kaohsiung city will follow the consensus of the legislature. Taipei county will follow the proposal offered by the opposition Taiwan Solidarity Union, Taoyuan county will adopt the ruling Democratic Progressive Party's scheme, and Pingtung county will use the scheme agreed upon by the Non-partisan Solidarity Union, People First Party, Kuomintang and Taiwan Solidarity Union." Under Articles 35 and 37 of the , the electoral constituencies are to be revised every ten years based on population density. Demographic data is obtained by investigation of

household registration Civil registration is the system by which a government records the vital events (births, marriages, and deaths) of its citizens and residents. The resulting repository or database has different names in different countries and even in differe ...

and should be compiled two years and two months before the tenure of current legislators end. The

Central Election Commission An election commission is a body charged with overseeing the implementation of electioneering process of any country. The formal names of election commissions vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and may be styled an electoral commission, a c ...

reviews the boundaries, then submits any proposed alterations to the Legislative Yuan 20 months before the election for final consent and announcement.

Indigenous districts

Six seats are

reserved Reserved is a Polish apparel retailer headquartered in Gdańsk, Poland. It was founded in 1999 and remains the flagship brand of the LPP (company), LPP group, which has more than 2,200 retail stores located in over 38 countries and also owns su ...

for

indigenous peoples There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...

. They are elected by

single non-transferable vote Single non-transferable vote or SNTV is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote. Being a semi-proportional variant of first-past-the-post voting, under SNTV small parties, as well as large parties, have a chance t ...

in two 3-member constituencies for lowland aborigines and highland aborigines respectively. This system did not fulfil the promise in the treaty-like document ''

A New Partnership Between the Indigenous Peoples and the Government of Taiwan A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, and others worldwide. Its name in English is '' a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient ...

'', where each of the 13 recognised

was to get at least one seat, and the distinction between highland and lowland abolished.

Party-list

Seats are allocated using the

largest remainder method Party-list proportional representation Apportionment methods The quota or divide-and-rank methods make up a category of apportionment rules, i.e. algorithms for allocating seats in a legislative body among multiple groups (e.g. parties or f ...

with the

Hare quota The Hare quota (sometimes called the simple, ideal, or Hamilton quota) is the number of voters represented by each legislator in an idealized system of proportional representation where every vote is used to elect someone. The Hare quota is eq ...

which, with 34 seats, is 2.9412%. A party's vote share must exceed a threshold of 5% to win any seats. Votes for parties which do not pass the threshold are first excluded. The vote share for the remaining parties are calculated. A party is allocated one seat for every 2.9412% of votes. The remaining seats are allocated in succession to the party with the largest remainder. For each party, at least half of the legislators elected under this system must be female. Therefore, with an odd number of seats, females will always outnumber males.

Parliamentary elections since 1991

Early parliamentary supplementary elections (1969–1989)

According to the interpretation of the Constitutional Court (

Judicial Yuan The Judicial Yuan () is the Judiciary, judicial branch of the Republic of China.''See'' Constitution arts. 77-82, ''available at'' ''See'' Additional Articles of the Constitution art. 5, ''available at'' It functions as the Constitutional Cour ...

), under the original constitution the

, and

Control Yuan The Control Yuan is the supervisory and auditory branch of the government of the Republic of China, both during its time in mainland China and Taiwan. Designed as a hybrid of auditor and ombudsman by Taiwanese law, the Control Yuan holds th ...

were seen to constitute the Parliament in Taiwan. After 20 years of relocating the government to

, the

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT) is a major political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan). It was the one party state, sole ruling party of the country Republic of China (1912-1949), during its rule from 1927 to 1949 in Mainland China until Retreat ...

-led

government of the Republic of China The Government of the Republic of China is the central government, national authority whose actual-controlled territory consists of Taiwan (island), main island of Taiwan (Formosa), Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu Islands, Matsu, and list of islands of ...

amended the ''

Temporary Provisions against the Communist Rebellion The Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist Rebellion provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of China were effective from 1948 to 1991 and amended four times by the Centr ...

'' to start limited parliamentary elections. Delegates of the

and members of the

are directly elected, while members of the

中央選舉委員會歷次選舉摘要－監察委員選舉
/ref> were indirectly elected by the provincial legislatures. The elected members served together with existing members elected by the

1947 Chinese National Assembly election National Assembly elections were held between 21 and 23 November 1947 in China. They were the first elections under the newly ratified 1947 constitution. Under this constitution, the National Assembly was a constitutional convention and presid ...

, the 1948 Chinese legislative election, and the 1947-1948 Chinese Control Yuan election in the respective chambers.

References

{{Taiwanese elections 1