Wednesday’s joint session of parliament rejected, by 341:150 votes with five abstentions, the proposal of the minority faction of House scrutiny committee for constituency and party ballots to be assigned the same numbers.
The minority faction had claimed that assigning the same numbers would be less confusing for the voters.
Under the two-ballot electoral system, to be applied in the next general election, scheduled for 2023, voters will cast one ballot for constituency MPs and the other for the party of their choice.
In the next election, the Lower House will consist of 400 seats for constituency MPs and 100 for party-list members. The current configuration is 350 constituency and 150 party-list seats.
This two-ballot system proposed by the Democrat Party is the only constitutional amendment proposal, out of a total of 13 drafts proposed by various political parties, which was accepted in Parliament last year. It is believed to benefit major parties when it comes to electoral seat calculations.