section_path: Electoral system
section_name: Electoral system
paragraph_text: Electoral system
  
  The Philippines uses parallel voting for its lower house elections. For this election, there are 317 seats in the House of Representatives; 254 of these are district representatives, and 63 are party-list representatives.
  
  The 1987 constitution mandates that there should be one party-list representative for every four district representatives. District representatives are elected under the first-past-the-post system from single-member districts. Congress has the power of creating congressional districts. The constitution originally had 200 districts, but had increased in number since then to the current 254 that will be disputed in this election.
  
  Party-list representatives are elected via the nationwide vote with a 2% election threshold, with a party winning not more than three seats. The party with the most votes usually wins three seats, then the other parties with more than 2% of the vote two seats. At this point, if all of the party-list seats are not filled up, the parties with less than 2% of the vote will win one seat each until all party-list seats are filled up. The electoral system, with the 2% threshold and the three-seat cap, encourage vote splitting; and encourage sectors to up separate party-lists for every sector so as not to waste their vote on just one party.
  
  Political parties competing in the party-list election are barred from participating district elections, and vice versa, unless permitted by the Commission on Elections. Party-lists and political parties participating in the district elections may forge coalition deals with one another.