Province None Population 85,584 (2016) Major settlements Melilla Date formed 1977 Seat 1 | Autonomous community None Electorate 57,795 (2016) Seats 1 Major settlement Melilla | |
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Created Spanish general election, 1977 | ||
Melilla is one of the 52 electoral districts (Spanish: circunscripciones) used for the Congress of Deputies—the lower chamber of the Spanish Parliament, the Cortes Generales.
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It has the smallest electorate of all the 52 districts and together with the other African enclave of Ceuta it is one of just two single member districts in Congress.
Boundaries and electoral system
Under Article 68.2 of the Spanish constitution the constituency must be a single member district and the boundaries must be the same as the Autonomous City of Melilla and under Article 140 this can only be altered with the approval of congress. Voting is on the basis of universal suffrage in a secret ballot. Officially, the electoral system used is closed list proportional representation with seats allocated using the D'Hondt method. The fact that Melilla is a single member district means that in practice it uses the same first past the post system used in many anglophone countries like the United Kingdom and USA.
Under article 12 of the constitution, the minimum voting age is 18.
Eligibility
Article 67.3 of the Spanish Constitution prohibits dual membership of the Cortes and regional assemblies, meaning that candidates must resign from Regional Assemblies if elected. Article 70 also makes active judges, magistrates, public defenders, serving military personnel, active police officers and members of constitutional and electoral tribunals ineligible.
1989 general election
The results of the 1989 general election in Melilla were declared void by the Spanish Supreme Court because of perceived irregularities in the ballot counting process and the initial vote tally awarding the district's only seat to the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party being extremely close. A by-election was held on 25 March 1990, in which the district's seat was won by the People's Party by a wide margin.