Iran - Islamic Consultative Assembly
This election gives all citizens, regardless of wealth, a fair shot to be heard and participate in every step of the democratic process
The Islamic Consultative Assembly
The Islamic Consultative Assembly (Persian: romanized: Majles-e Showra-ye Eslami), also called the Iranian Parliament, the Iranian Majles (Arabicised spelling Majlis), is the national legislative body of Iran. - Posted on : 01-October-2019
Legislative Assembly in Iran
The popularly elected legislative assembly in Iran is the Islamic Consultative Assembly: the Majles-e-Shura-ye-Eslami or simply the Majlis.
The electoral system for this assembly is not entrenched in the constitution but is specified by ordinary law. The electoral system in use for the 2000 elections was a Two-Round System (TRS) which means that the election was carried out in two rounds to fill all the seats in a constituency if enough candidates did not get the required level of support in the first round.
A general description of the TRS can be found in the Electoral System topic area of the ACE Encyclopaedia.
In Iran, each elector has one vote and there are a varying number of seats to be filled in each constituency. After the first round of the election the votes are calculated and the candidates who have received the highest number of votes and at least a required minimum percentage of votes get a seat in the Majlis. How many candidates get a seat in this round is therefore restricted to how many seats there are in the constituency and how many candidates have reached the minimum percentage level of votes.
An absolute majority is not required - as it is in many other TRS- to acquire a seat in this first round, but a plurality of 25% is sufficient. This was changed just before the 2000 election from a one-third minimum as a compromise between the previous 33% and a suggested simple plurality. If there are still seats to be filled after the first round there will be a second round, a runoff, between twice as many candidates as there are seats left to be filled in the constituency (or simply all the candidates that are left in the election if there are fewer candidates left than twice the number of seats). - Posted on : 11-May-2019
A tale of two elections
As fate would have it, this year both Iran and the United States are the scenes of two historic elections. In Iran, the state is getting ready for two crucial elections on February 26: one to elect the Islamic Consultative Assembly and the other the Assembly of Experts for the Leadership.
At the same time, the US is in the full grip of the early primary elections leading to the nominations of two candidates from the two top political parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, competing to become the next president of the US.
On the surface, comparing Iran and the US might be a bit ludicrous: Iran is a fully functioning clerical theocracy in the tight grip of the Shia clerical class, while the US is the seat of one of the oldest enduring democracies in the world. - Posted on : 22-February-2016
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