Election Districts
The 25 Members of Parliament are elected from two election districts. 15 MPs are elected from the Upper Country election district, 10 MPs from the Lower Country election district.

Proportional Representation
The election procedure is general, secret, equal, and direct. All citizens 18 years of age or older who live in the country are eligible to vote. MPs are elected according to the system of proportional representation: Seats are first allocated to political parties in proportion to the total number of votes attained by each party (or by their candidates) in an election district. Within each party, those candidates are considered elected who have attained the highest number of votes.

Threshold
Only those political parties are assigned seats that have attained at least 8% of the votes cast in the entire country.

Term of Office
The term of office is four years. According to the Constitution, regular parliamentary elections take place in February or March of the fourth year.

Alternate Members of Parliament
The election of Alternate Members of Parliament is a feature particular to Liechtenstein: For every three seats a political party obtains in an election district, the party is entitled to one Alternate Member of Parliament. Each party represented in Parliament is entitled to at least one AMP, however, so that small parties are not excluded from the rule pertaining to AMPs. The function of the AMPs is primarily to ensure the majority balance in Parliament if an MP is unable to attend a meeting of Parliament. AMPs may not be elected to the parliamentary committees, but they may be elected to a parliamentary delegation to international organizations. This rule was primarily due to the work load of the MPs.

Representation of Women
It continues to be difficult for women to be elected to Parliament. The first woman was elected in 1986. Two women were elected in 1993; but from 1997 to 2001, only one regular female MP served in Parliament. In the 2009 elections, six women were elected to Parliament. Of the current total of eight Alternate Members of Parliament, two are women.

Number of Parties
The formation of the first political parties occurred in 1918. Until 1993, only the Progressive Citizens’ Party (Fortschrittliche Bürgerpartei, FBP) and the Patriotic Union (Vaterländische Union, VU) were represented in Parliament. Since the introduction of proportional representation in 1939, elections generally resulted in very narrow majorities, which led to the formation of coalition governments for a long time (1938-1997). In 1993, the Free List (Freie Liste, FL) was the first third party to surpass the 8% threshold and enter Parliament. From 1997 until the beginning of the year 2005, Liechtenstein had one-party-governments. Since April 2005 Liechtenstein has again a coalition government.

Voter Turnout
Voter turnout in Liechtenstein is traditionally very high. It was again 84.6% in the parliamentary elections on 8 February 2009.
Detailed election results may be found at www.landtag.li .