Party-list representation in the House of Representatives of the Philippines

While most seats in the House of Representatives of the Philippines are elected by plurality vote in single-member districts, 20% of representatives are elected by party-list proportional representation. The 1987 Constitution of the Philippines created the party-list system. Originally, the party-list was open to underrepresented community sectors or groups, including labor, peasant, urban poor, indigenous cultural, women, youth, and other such sectors as may be defined by law (except the religious sector). However, a 2013 Supreme Court decision clarified that the party-list is a system of proportional representation open to various kinds of groups and parties, and not an exercise exclusive to marginalized sectors. National parties or organizations and regional parties or organizations do not need to organize along sectoral lines and do not need to represent any marginalized and underrepresented sector.

The determination of what parties are allowed to participate—who their nominees should be, how the winners should be determined, and the allocation of seats for the winning parties—has been controversial ever since the party-list election was first contested in 1998 and has resulted in several landmark COMELEC and Supreme Court cases.

Party-list representatives are indirectly elected via a party-list election wherein the voter votes for the party and not for the party's nominees (closed list); the votes are then arranged in descending order, with the parties that won at least 2% of the national vote given one seat, with additional seats determined by a formula dependent on the number of votes garnered by the party. No party wins more than three seats. If the number of sectoral representatives does not reach 20% of the total number of representatives in the House, parties that haven't won seats but garnered enough votes to place them among the top sectoral parties are given a seat each until the 63 seats are filled. A voter therefore has two parallel votes in House of Representatives elections—for district representative and for the under-represented sectoral-party list representative/s. Neither vote affects the other.

Party-list representation makes use of the tendency for proportional representation systems to favor single-issue parties, and applies that tendency to allow underrepresented sectors to represent themselves in the law-making process.

Manner of election

Constitution

The Constitution mandates that the sectoral representatives shall compose 20% of the House of Representatives. For three consecutive terms after the ratification of the constitution, one-half of the seats allocated to party-list representatives were filled "by selection or election." For the 1987, 1992 and 1995 elections, the president appointed sectoral representatives, subject to the confirmation from the Commission on Appointments, half of whose members are derived from the House of Representatives.

Party-List System Act

On March 3, 1995, Republic Act No. 7941 or the Party-List System Act was signed into law by President Fidel V. Ramos. It mandated that "the state shall promote proportional representation in the election of representatives to the House of Representatives through a party-list system". The five political parties with the highest number of members at the start of the 10th Congress of the Philippines were banned from participating. Each voter can vote one party via closed list; votes are then tallied nationwide as one at-large district, with the number of sectoral representatives not to surpass 20% of the total number of representatives. The law provided that each party that has 2% of the national vote be entitled one seat each, and an additional seat for every 2% of the vote thereafter until a party has three seats. This means that a party can win the maximum three seats if it surpasses 6% of the national vote.

While the law was first used for the 1998 election, and several parties did meet the 2% quota during the succeeding elections, they did not fill up the required 20% allocation for party-list representatives of the constitution. Furthermore, the votes for parties that had more than 6% of the vote were considered wasted. Ateneo de Manila University mathematics professor Felix Muga II said that "Any seat allocation formula that imposes a seat-capping mechanism on the party-list proportional representation voting system contradicts the social justice provision of the 1987 Constitution."

Any vacancy is filled by the person next in line on the list; in cases where a seated sectoral representative switches parties, that representative loses their seat and the person next in line on the list assumes the seat.

Contestations

Veterans Federation Party et al. vs. COMELEC

In 2000, the Veterans Federation Party (VFP), the Akbayan! Citizens' Action Party and several other parties sued the COMELEC, which led a case in the Supreme Court; the court ruling changed the way how the seats are allocated for the winning parties. In 1998, only 14 representatives were elected out of 13 winning parties, well short of the then 52 representatives needed to fill up 20% of the House. The so-called "Panganiban formula", named after Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban, calculates that the number of seats a party will win is dependent on the number of votes of the party with the highest number of votes.

The court maintained the four inviolable parameters:

First, the twenty percent allocation – the combined number of all party-list congress representatives shall not exceed twenty percent of the total membership of the House of Representatives, including those elected under the party list.

Second, the two percent threshold – only those parties garnering a minimum of two percent of the total valid votes cast for the party-list system are "qualified" to have a seat in the House of Representatives;

Third, the three-seat limit – each qualified party, regardless of the number of votes it actually obtained, is entitled to a maximum of three seats; that is, one "qualifying" and two additional seats.

Fourth, proportional representation – the additional seats which a qualified party is entitled to shall be computed "in proportion to their total number of votes".

The court came up with the following procedure on how to determine how many seats a party wins. First, the party with the highest number of votes gets at least one seat. It can win additional seats for every 2% of the national vote until it reaches the three-seat limit.

Therefore:

where:

• TP_s is the number of seats of the top party.
• g is the percentage of votes garnered by the sectoral organization,

For the other parties surpassing the 2% threshold, they all automatically win one seat; additional seats will be won according to the following formula.

where:

• S is the number of seats
• PV is the votes for the party
• TP is the votes of the top party.
• TP_s is the number of seats of the top party.

The product, disregarding integers, is the number of additional seats for the party.

Prior to the adopting the "Panganiban formula," the court considered applying the Niemayer formula used in the allocation of seats in the German Bundestag. However, since R.A. 7941 limits the maximum number of seats for each party to three, of the existence of a 2% quota, and that 20% of the seats can be filled up, the court instead devised the formula above to ensure that the 20% allocation for sectoral representatives would not be exceeded, the 2% threshold will be upheld, the three-seat limit enforced and the proportional representation be respected. The formula was first used in determining the result of the 2001, and was first applied in the 2004 elections.

The use of this formula by the COMELEC had been labeled by certain groups as to "annihilate independent voices in the House," according to Akbayan representative Etta Rosales. The court upheld this in subsequent cases, such as the Partido ng Manggagawa vs. COMELEC and Citizens' Battle Against Corruption vs. COMELEC.

Panganiban in 2010 remarked in a lecture at the Ateneo Law School that "It's very complicated and there must be an easier formula to compute," adding that the party-list law has to be amended by Congress.

BANAT vs. COMELEC

In 2007, another party-list group, the Barangay Association for National Advancement and Transparency (BANAT, now Barangay Natin!) sued the COMELEC for not proclaiming the full number of party-list representatives (they were not among on those who were proclaimed winners). As with the other cases, the Supreme Court condensed all the cases to one case. The court ruled on April 21, 2009, that the 2% election threshold unconstitutional, and stipulated that for every four legislative districts created, one seat for sectoral representatives should be created; this thereby increased the sectoral seats in the 14th Congress from 22 to 55; the Supreme Court, however, upheld the 3-seat cap.

To determine the number of seats for sectoral representatives, the formula for the quotient is: