At a national level, Greece holds elections (ekloges) for its legislature, the Hellenic Parliament.
Election of the legislature The Greek Parliament (Voulí ton Ellínon) has 300 members, elected for a four-year term by a system of "reinforced" proportional representation. Of the 300 seats, 285 are allocated to 59 constituencies, 50 of which are multi-seat and 9 single-seat. 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%. In each constituency, voters may select the candidate or candidates of their choice by marking their name on the party ballot.
In 2016, the previous parliament, under a left-wing majority, abolished the reinforced proportionality system, which had been in effect since 2004. The previous system had been boosting the first party's seat count with 50 "bonus" seats, in order to facilitate single-party absolute majorities in parliament. It was replaced by a party-list proportional representation system, under which single-party parliamentary majorities, commonly achieved by first parties under previous electoral systems, could now only be achieved with a vote share of at least 45%, effectively making coalition governments the norm. 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. Hence, the previous system was still applied in the 2019 election, which the opposition won, whereas the new system was applied in the 2023 election for the first time.
In 2020, parliament, under its new conservative majority, repealed party-list proportional representation and reverted the system to a sliding scale majority bonus system. The new system is similar to the pre-2016 reinforced majority system, with the only difference being that the size of the majority bonus is now tied to the largest party's national vote share, ranging from a minimum of 20 seats for a vote share of 25% to a maximum of 50 seats for vote shares of 40% and above; no majority bonus is awarded to the first party if its vote share is below 25%. Under normal circumstances, an absolute majority can be achieved by the first party with 38% of the vote. However, as was the case with the proportional representation system voted by the previous parliament in 2016, the two thirds supermajority required by the constitution for a new electoral system to be immediately applied in the next election (in May 2023) was not met, and, therefore, the new system only started to be applied to the next election after that, which was held a month later in June 2023.
Greek citizens aged 17 and over on the year of the election are eligible to vote, and at the age of 25 and over are also eligible to be elected to Parliament. Women's suffrage was adopted in 1952.
Constituencies
Constituencies in Greece have traditionally been multi-seat, and they mostly coincide with prefectures. The number of seats is adjusted once every ten years, following the decennial population census. Prefecture constituencies may not be deprived of representation, nor may they be merged with another prefecture; they may however be split into smaller constituencies if their population increases disproportionately: this was the case with the Athens B constituency which was split into three smaller constituencies in 2019. Population changes have left nine (Kefalonia, Lefkas, Eurytania, Grevena, Samos, Thesprotia, Kastoria, Phocis and Zakynthos) prefectures with a single parliamentary seat each, whereas some urban or suburban constituencies have seen large increases in their seat allotment over the years.
Following the census of 2021, the largest constituencies can be found in the metropolitan areas of Athens and Thessaloniki. These are Athens B3 (19 seats), Thessaloniki A (17 seats), Athens B1 (16 seats), Athens A (13 seats), Athens B2 (12 seats) and East Attica (12 seats). The remaining constituencies elect single-digit numbers of MPs. The largest constituency outside Athens and Thessaloniki is Achaea, which has 9 seats.
Voting Polling takes place in school buildings on a Sunday, a festive occasion for students who are then given a four-day weekend off. The procedure is run by a presiding judge or attorney-at-law appointed by the local bar association, and secretarially assisted by local citizens selected by lot in a process resembling jury duty. Local party representatives are allowed to monitor tallying; their theoretical role is to ensure transparency.
Security at polling stations Nowadays, police presence varies as police officers might be allocated to stand guard at an individual polling centre or supervise -that is, to patrol the general vicinity of- more than one polling centre (especially in the countryside). Up until 1998,Law 2623/1998, Article 5, Paragraph 33 the responsibility of guarding polling stations was shared between the Hellenic Armed Forces and the Hellenic Police, while there was no provision for laissez faire supervision of multiple polling centres:Presidential Decree 92/1994, Article 79 (Keeping of the order during voting) where necessary, armed teams of conscripts and their supervisors (career NCO or officer) were to reside inside the polling stations from the day prior to the election until the day of the announcement of the results.Presidential Decree 126/1992 (ΦΕΚ Α΄ 63/1992), Regulation Governing the Deployment of Troops Away from Military Bases (Κανονισμός Εξωτερικής Υπηρεσίας Στρατευμάτων), Chapter Z Military election observers, articles 33 through 36. In 1998 the provision regarding the Armed Forces was abolished, and Police presence was reduced from six-member to four-member teams.EXPLANATORY REPORT on the draft law “Revision of the electoral rolls, organization and exercise of the right to vote by non-resident voters, modernizationμ of the electoral process, and other provisions”
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,Policemen armed with G3 rifles guarding a polling station during the 1990 Greek legislative election while police unionists noted that the duty of guarding a polling centre should not fall on a single officer per shift. 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.
Electoral system
The Greek electoral system was codified for the first time by Presidential Decree in 2012; prior to that date it was made up of various pieces of legislation passed at different times. 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. There is also an electoral threshold of 3% which all parties and individuals need to pass on a national level before being awarded any seats. These provisions are aimed at helping the largest party secure an absolute majority of parliamentary seats (151 out of 300), enhancing governmental stability. The majority bonus of 50 seats was abolished in 2016, but was still applied at the 2019 Greek legislative election because the new electoral law did not receive a supermajority in Parliament, and can thus not be enforced in the next election.
The May 2023 election saw the electoral system change to a fully proportional representation system, as the majority bonus was abolished by the Syriza government in 2016. The June 2023 election reverted to semi-proportional representation with a sliding scale bonus after it was passed in parliament in 2020.
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 remaining 250 seats are divided proportionally in parliamentary constituencies according to each party's total valid vote percentage; this is slightly higher than the raw percentage reported, as there is always a small number of invalidated or "blank" votes (usually less than 1%), as well as the percentage of smaller parties that fail to surpass the 3% threshold, all of which are disregarded for the purpose of seat allotment. 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. The introduction of the majority bonus makes seat allocation especially complex, but the steps followed for the allocation of seats are as follows:
The number of seats a party is entitled to is first determined by dividing the total number of valid votes cast for parties which have surpassed the 3% national threshold and dividing it by 250 (99§2); this is later used to 'correct' the proportional results in the constituencies, ensuring that 50 seats always remain empty for the majority bonus. The 12 seats elected through national-wide party-list are awarded by first determining a quota by taking the total number of valid votes for parties which have surpassed the 3% electoral threshold on a national level and dividing it by 12 (100§1). The total number of valid votes cast for each party is then divided by the quota, and the sum is rounded down, disregarding decimals, to produce the number of seats the party is awarded (100§2), so that a sum of 5.6 for example awards 5 seats to that party. If any of the 12 seats left empty in this step, a seat is awarded to each party in descending order of leftover decimals until all seats have been allocated in this manner (100§3). The 7 seats elected through first-past-the-post in single-seat constituencies are awarded to the party which has the most votes in each of the constituencies in question, provided that that party has surpassed the 3% electoral threshold on a national level (100§5).