Congressional districts of the Philippines ( fil, distritong pangkapulungan) refers to the

electoral district An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, or (election) precinct is a subdivision of a larger state (a country, administrative region, or other polity ...

s or constituencies in which the country is divided for the purpose of electing 253 of the 316 members of the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

(with the other 63 being elected through a system of

party-list proportional representation Party-list proportional representation (list-PR) is a subset of proportional representation electoral systems in which multiple candidates are elected (e.g., elections to parliament) through their position on an electoral list. They can also be us ...

). The country is currently divided into 253 congressional districts, also known as legislative districts or representative districts, with each one representing at least 250,000 people or one entire

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...

. The 1987

Constitution of the Philippines The Constitution of the Philippines (Filipino: ''Saligang Batas ng Pilipinas'' or ''Konstitusyon ng Pilipinas'', Spanish: ''Constitución de la República de Filipinas'') is the constitution or the supreme law of the Republic of the Philippines ...

initially provided for a maximum 200 congressional districts or 80 percent of the maximum 250 seats for the

lower house A lower house is one of two Debate chamber, chambers of a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the upper house. Despite its official position "below" the upper house, in many legislatures worldwide, the lower house has co ...

, with the remaining 20 percent or 50 seats allotted for sectoral or party-list representatives. This number has since been revised with the enactment of several laws creating more districts pursuant to the 1991 Local Government Code. Philippine congressional districts are contiguous and compact territories composed of adjacent local government units where practicable. They are

single-member district A single-member district is an electoral district represented by a single officeholder. It contrasts with a multi-member district, which is represented by multiple officeholders. Single-member districts are also sometimes called single-winner vo ...

s which return one member each to the lower chamber, elected to serve a maximum of three consecutive three-year terms through a

first-past-the-post voting In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast their ...

system. The

Philippine Statistics Authority The Philippine Statistics Authority (Filipino: ''Pangasiwaan ng Estadistika ng Pilipinas''), abbreviated as PSA, is the central statistical authority of the Philippine government that ''collects, compiles, analyzes and publishes statistical inf ...

conducts a constitutionally mandated quinquennial census whose figures are used to determine the number of congressional districts to which each province or

city A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

is entitled, in a process called

apportionment The legal term apportionment (french: apportionement; Mediaeval Latin: , derived from la, portio, share), also called delimitation, is in general the distribution or allotment of proper shares, though may have different meanings in different c ...

List

References

{{Philippine congressional districts Politics of the Philippines

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

Philippines politics-related lists

List

See also

References