Elections in Greece

The Greek Parliament (Voulí ton Ellínon) has 300 members, elected for a four-year term by a system of "reinforced" proportional representation.

The remaining 15 MPs are elected from nationwide party lists, of which 3 are required to represent the Greek diaspora.

Seat allocation to individual parties is done on the basis of their nationwide vote share, provided they have reached the electoral threshold of 3%.

On those grounds, and arguing that proportional representation would cause political instability, the new law was strongly contested by the conservative opposition and failed to get the two thirds supermajority required by the constitution for a new electoral system to be immediately applied in the next election.

Polling takes place in school buildings on a Sunday, a festive occasion for students who are then given a four-day weekend off.

[4] During the 2019 European Parliament and local elections, police officers on guard received orders not to be armed only during the morning and afternoon shift of the day of the election, something in sharp contrast with past practices,[5] while police unionists noted that the duty of guarding a polling centre should not fall on a single officer per shift.

[6] In 2021, the mention of the past presence of armed Hellenic Army soldiers in polling centres by a New Democracy MP in parliament was decried by Avgi.

The current system is called "reinforced proportionality" in Greece (ενισχυμένη αναλογική), and is a form of semi-proportional representation with a 50-seat majority bonus for the party that wins a plurality of the vote.

These provisions are aimed at helping the largest party secure an absolute majority of parliamentary seats (151 out of 300), enhancing governmental stability.

The June 2023 election reverted to semi-proportional representation with a sliding scale bonus after it was passed in parliament in 2020.

[2][9] The 50-seat majority bonus system was used for the first time in the May 2012 election; it reserves 50 parliamentary seats for the party emerges as the largest by total votes cast on a national level.

The previous law (used in the 2009 legislative elections) was less favorable for the plurality party, as only 40 additional seats were reserved for them.

Articles 99 and 100 of the codified electoral law lay out the way in which parties are allocated seats in accordance with the percentage of votes they received in a legislative election.

All Greek citizens aged 17 or over in the year of the election are eligible to vote, provided they are on the electoral register, unless: According to Presidential Decree 26/2012(as amended by law 4648/2019), article 4, 1 January is-for electoral purposes-considered the birthday of all citizens turning 17 in that year.

Special registration is necessary only for absentee voting, which is done at the place of a voter's temporary residence on election day.

In the past a citizen had to present an up-to-date election booklet to be issued a driver licence or a passport, or else justify why they did not vote (e.g. because of absence, infirmity, or advanced old age).

The liberal wave of Venizelism resulted soon in the reaction of the "old-system" political leaders, who formed the core of an opposing conservative movement, which used the monarchy as its main rallying banner.

Thereby, the two biggest ideological movements, the republican centrist-liberal and the monarchist conservative, emerged and formed massive political organizations.

The centrist and the conservative parties bitterly confronted each other in the ensuing legislative elections for many decades, until metapolitefsi.

Until recently, Greece has had a two-party system dominated by the liberal-conservative New Democracy (ND) and the center-left Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK).

Before the 2019 constitutional amendment, if the third vote was fruitless, Parliament was dissolved and elections were proclaimed by the outgoing president within the next 30 days.

In the European elections, the whole country forms a single constituency and an electoral threshold is set at 3% of the vote.

The second phase, initially called "Kapodistrias II" but eventually named the "Callicrates Project", was implemented in 2010; it further consolidated municipalities down to 370, and merged the country's 54 prefectures into 13 peripheries.

[16] In all local elections, the winning candidacy list is guaranteed a minimum three-fifths majority in the respective councils.