160 party-list groups to vie for 63 seats

THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) said a total of 160 party-list groups would contest the 63 available seats at the House of Representatives in the upcoming 2025 midterm polls.

Comelec records show that of the 160 party-list groups, 42 were newly accredited for purposes of the 2025 elections, while the 118 others got their accreditation in previous years.

In the 2022 national polls, a total of 177 party-list groups participated.

«This is significantly fewer than the number of party-lists who participated in previous elections,» Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia said on Wednesday.

Under Republic Act 7941, or the Party-List System Act, party-list representatives shall constitute 20 percent of the total seats in the House of Representatives.

It mandates that party-list groups receiving at least 2 percent of the total votes for the party-list system shall be entitled to one seat each.

If an organization gets more than 2 percent, it may be entitled to additional seats, provided that no party-list organization can hold more than three seats, regardless of the total number of votes.

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Garcia added that even those who would not be able to get 2 percent of the total votes still have the chance to get a seat under the second round of allocation to ensure that the 20 percent requirement is met using the «Banat formula» that stemmed out of a court ruling.

In Banat party-list v. Comelec case in 2009, the Supreme Court ruled that party-list groups will be ranked from highest to lowest depending on the number of votes they received in the elections.

There will be two rounds of seat allocation: Those that received 2 percent of the total votes cast for the party-list were guaranteed one seat each. In the second round, party-list groups that do not meet the 2 percent threshold will get their chance to be assigned seats to ensure that the 20 percent requirement for the party-list system is met.

Sen. Imee Marcos leads reelectionist and comebacking candidates in filing their certificates of candidacy (CoC) for the midterm 2025 elections at the Manila Hotel on Oct. 2, 2024. Marcos was the first to file her CoC as a member of the Nacionalista Party. She was accompanied