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Regular elections in Croatia are mandated by the Constitution and legislation enacted by Parliament. The presidency, Parliament, county prefects and assemblies, city and town mayors, and city and municipal councils are all elective offices. Since 1990, five presidential elections have been held. During the same period, eight parliamentary elections (including two for the upper house when the parliament was bicameral) were also held. In addition, there were six nationwide local elections. Croatia is expected to elect 12 members of the European Parliament after its accession to the EU in the scheduled 2014 European Parliament election (which is planned to include Croatia). The President of Croatia is elected to a five-year term by a direct vote of all citizens in a two-round system, requiring runoff elections if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of votes in the first round. Members of Parliament are elected to a four-year term in ten multi-seat constituencies, with additional members elected in special constituencies reserved for the Croatian diaspora and national minorities. As of November 2011, legislation provides for the election of 151 members of the unicameral parliament. Out of 25 political parties which won seats in Croatian parliamentary elections held since 1990, only five have won ten seats or more in any one parliamentary election. Those were the Croatian Democratic Union, the Croatian Peasant Party, the Croatian People's Party – Liberal Democrats, the Croatian Social Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party of Croatia. The county prefects, city and town mayors are elected to four-year terms by a majority of votes cast within applicable local government units, with a runoff election if no candidate achieves a majority in the first round of voting. Members of county, city and town councils are elected to four-year terms through proportional representation, with the entire local government unit as a single constituency. Any Croatian citizen over age 18 may be a candidate in presidential, parliamentary or local government elections, provided that a sufficient number of endorsements by Croatian voters is obtained beforehand. Croatian elections are relatively well-regulated; regulations include spending limits, annual donation limits, a limitation on the number of endorsed candidates and election lists and regulations governing media coverage. Voting takes place in polling stations in Croatia and abroad, monitored by an electoral board and observers at each station. Ballots consist of an alphabetical list of candidates, or an election list with ordinal numbers (which are circled to indicate a vote). All votes are counted by hand. The State Electoral Commission publishes official results and handles complaints, supported by county, city and town electoral commissions during local elections. Decisions of the electoral commissions may be appealed at the Constitutional Court of Croatia. ==Parliamentary elections== The Parliament of Croatia ((クロアチア語:Hrvatski Sabor)) consists of 151 members elected to four-year terms in twelve constituencies. Out of that number, 140 are elected in ten multi-seat territorial constituencies. These are defined on the basis of the existing county borders, with necessary amendments to achieve a uniform number of eligible voters in each constituency (plus or minus five percent). The eleventh constituency is for citizens of Croatia living abroad; the number of seats held by this constituency was fixed at three for the last parliamentary election, held in December 2011. The 2010 constitutional amendments abolished the former scheme, in which the number of MPs elected from the eleventh constituency was proportional to the ratio to the number of ballots cast in the other ten constituencies. In the 2007 general election, this method led to the eleventh constituency electing five MPs. An additional eight members of the parliament are elected from the twelfth constituency. It encompasses the entire country; candidates in this constituency are elected by voters belonging to 22 recognized minorities in Croatia: the Serb minority elects three MPs, the Hungarians and Italians elect one MP each, the Czech and Slovak minorities jointly elect one MP, and all other minorities elect the final two MPs. The nationality of the voters is listed in the voter registry, which is provided by the registrar's office that maintains Croatia's vital records. Voter nationalities are normally officially declared by the parents at birth, but any citizen may declare or change that information later on at the registrar's office at least 14 days ahead of elections (not at the polling station). The voter's nationality need not be declared or may be declared as unknown. During elections, voters who have officially declared they belong to one of the recognized minorities in Croatia may choose to vote for either a territorially applicable list or a corresponding national minority list; a voter of unknown or non-declared nationality may vote for either a territorially applicable list or any minority list; a voter who has declared a nationality other than Croat or a recognized minority may vote only for a territorially applicable list (the same as someone who has declared themselves a Croat). The standard d'Hondt formula is applied to the vote, with a five-percent election threshold. The last parliamentary election elected a total of 151 MPs.〔 An election silence is enforced on the day before and the day of the elections, ending at 7:00 pm when the polling stations close and the exit polls are published. Although political parties fund their campaigns using donations or their own assets, the government reimburses them for each parliamentary seat won. For instance, each seat won in the 2011 parliamentary election brought a party 180,000 kuna ( euros). Smaller sums were paid to parties or candidates failing to win any parliamentary seats, provided that they received more than five percent of the votes cast in a constituency. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Elections in Croatia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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