How often are parliamentary elections held?
Every four years, together with the election of the President of the Republic. The election must be held on the third Sunday of November of the year prior to which the President-in-Office must leave office.
What offices are elected in each election?
Deputies and senators are elected on the same day.
The deputies last four years in their positions. Those who are exercising that function can stand for reelection.
Senators last eight years in office and can be re-elected. Elections are held every four years. In an election those representing the regions of Tarapacá, Atacama, Valparaíso, Maule, La Araucanía, Aysén and Arica and Parinacota are renewed. Four years later, the election of the senators for the regions of Antofagasta, Coquimbo, O’Higgins, Bío Bío, Los Lagos, Magallanes, Los Ríos, Ñuble and the Metropolitan Region corresponds.
How many candidates are running?
The Chamber of Deputies is made up of 155 deputies, distributed in 28 electoral districts.
The Senate is currently made up of 43 senators. In the 2017 elections, 23 senators from odd-numbered regions were elected using a proportional system. Another 27 senators from even-numbered regions are expected to be elected in 2021, plus the Metropolitan Region. This will complete the number of 50 members that the upper house will have in 2022. Each region is a senatorial constituency. Some regions will elect two senators, others three, and the most populous five.
What requirements are there to be a deputy?
- Be a citizen with the right to vote.
- Be 21 years of age or older.
- Have completed high school or equivalent.
- Have residence in the region to which the corresponding electoral district belongs for a period of no less than two years, counted back from the day of the election.
What are the requirements to be a senator?
- Be a citizen with the right to vote.
- Have completed high school or equivalent.
- Be 35 years of age or older on Election Day.
What specific requirements are there also to be a candidate?
If the candidate belongs to a political party or list of parties, it is enough for the same community to register him as a standard-bearer. The candidate must be affiliated with the corresponding party for at least two months before the closing date for the registration of candidacies and not have been affiliated with another party within the nine months prior to that date.
If the candidate is independent, she cannot have been affiliated with a political party within the nine months prior to the expiration of the deadline for the registration of candidacies, and have the citizen sponsorship (signatures) required by the Electoral Service. If the independent is part of an electoral list, he does not need the signatures.
Are there primaries to choose the candidates?
Political parties, when their internal bodies so determine, may participate in legal and binding primary election processes to define their candidates, but they are not obliged to do so.
The primary election for the nomination of candidates for the positions of parliamentarians will be national and must be held on the twentieth Sunday prior to the date of the election of the President of the Republic, senators and deputies.
Who cannot be candidates for parliament?
- Ministers of State.
- Intendants, governors, mayors, members of regional councils, councilors and undersecretaries.
- Members of the Board of the Central Bank.
- Magistrates of the superior courts of justice and judges of letters.
- Members of the Constitutional Court, the Qualifying Court of Elections and the regional electoral courts.
- The Comptroller General of the Republic.
- People who hold a managerial position of a union or neighborhood nature.
- Natural persons and the managers or administrators of legal persons that enter into or guarantee contracts with the State.
- The National Prosecutor, the regional prosecutors and the deputy prosecutors of the Public Ministry.
- The Commanders-in-Chief of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, the General Director of Carabineros, the Director General of the Investigative Police and the officers belonging to the Armed Forces and the Forces of Order and Public Security.
For some of these cases, minimum terms are established in which they must have left their positions before being candidates.
How do you meet the candidates?
The Electoral Service maintains the official list of candidates for popular elections. Also, of course, you can find out from the press and the campaigns that each candidate carries out.
How many candidates can I vote for?
Only one for each position. You will be given a ballot to elect senator, and another for deputy. You can only mark one candidate on each ballot. If you check more than one, the vote will be considered void.
How is the winner of the election defined?
As many senators and deputies are elected, according to what the law has determined for each district or circumscription. The candidates, both those from political parties and independent ones, are grouped into lists. The Chilean proportional electoral system uses a mechanism called the D’Hondt coefficient. The votes of each list are divided by one, two, three up to the number of positions that are elected. The resulting figures are ordered from the one with the most votes in a list to the least voted. The results are then compared with those of the other lists to determine how many positions each list chooses.
How is the participation of candidates encouraged?
No party may have more than 60% of candidates of the same sex. For this reason, parties cannot submit more than 40 percent of their candidacies to primary elections.
What does it take to vote for a parliamentarian?
The same requirements as for any other popular election: Be over 18 years of age on the day of voting, have not suffered a disqualification to vote and present the identity card or passport at the time of voting.