Parliament passed with its third and final reading on December 24 ruling coalition GD-proposed legislative amendment replacing plurality vote for electing majoritarian MPs in single-mandate constituencies with majority vote.

Georgia’s 150-member Parliament is elected through mixed system, wherein 73 lawmakers are elected in 73 majoritarian, single-mandate constituencies and the remaining 77 seats are allocated by a party-list, proportional vote.

Under the previous rule a majoritarian MP candidate with more votes than others, but not less than 30%, was declared an outright winner of the race.

According to the GD-proposed amendment to the election code, threshold required for an outright victory in the first round will increase from 30% to 50%.

A second round runoff should be held if none of the candidate garners more than 50% of votes.

On December 23 the Parliament passed with its final reading separate legislative amendments envisaging redistricting of 73 single-mandate constituencies. The redistricting aims at creating electoral districts of relatively equal size by number of voters.

Opposition parties and civil society groups have been calling for scrapping majoritarian component of the electoral system for next year’s parliamentary elections, but the ruling GD coalition agrees to do so for post-2016 elections.