House of Congress (Mobius)

The House of Congress (Chambre du Congrès; Kammer des Kongresses) is the lower house of the bicameral parliament of Mobius, the Jesston State Hall, the other one being the House of Peers. It has 400 seats, which are filled through elections using a party-list proportional representation. It sits in the House of Congress chamber in the Jesston State Hall in Jesston.

Name
Although this body is officially called the "House of Congress" in English, this is not a direct translation of its official French and German names, the "Room of Congress" and the "Chamber of Congress", respectively. Colloquially, this chamber is simply referred to as the "Congress". Members of the House are referred to as "Member of Congress" instead of "congressman".

Relationships with the executive
The Constitution of Mobius has given the executive greater power at the expense of the Jesston State Hall, compared to other constitutional monarchies (United Kingdom, the Netherlands, etc.).

The King of the Confederation can decide to dissolve the House of Congress and call for new congressional elections. This is meant as a way to resolve stalemates where the Congress cannot decide on a clear political direction. This possibility has never been exercised.

The House of Congress can overthrow the executive government (that is, the Prime Minister and other ministers) by a motion of no confidence. For this reason, the prime minister and his cabinet are necessarily from the dominant part or coalition in the congress.

While motions of no confidence are periodically proposed by the opposition following privy council actions that it deems highly inappropriate, they are purely rhetorical; party discipline ensures that, throughout a parliamentary term, the privy council is never overthrown by the Congress. There has never been a successful motion of no confidence in Mobian history.

The privy council (the prime minister and the minister of relationships with parliament) used to set the priorities of the agenda for the congress' sessions, except for a single day of each month. In practice, given the number of priority items, it meant that the schedule of the congress was almost entirely set by the executive; bills generally only have a chance to be examined if proposed or supported by the executive. This, however, was amended in 2008. Under the amended constitution, the privy council sets the priorities for two weeks in a month. Another week is designated for the congress' "control" prerogatives (consisting mainly of verbal questions addressed to the privy council). And the fourth one is set by the congress. Also, one day per month is set by a "minority" (group supporting the privy council but which is not the biggest group) or "opposition" (group having officially declared it did not support the privy council) group.

Legislators of the congress can ask written or oral questions of ministers. The Wednesday afternoon 3 p.m. session of "questions to the Privy Council" is broadcast live on television. Like Prime Minister's Questions in Britain, it is largely a show for the viewers, with members of the majority asking flattering questions, while the opposition tries to embarrass the privy council.

Elections
The 400 Members of Congress are elected by direct universal suffrage with a party-list proportional representation voting system, for a four-year mandate, subject to dissolution. Since 2000, the seats are distributed among the states depending on its population, this measure was implemented to prevent over-representation in the cities. The four kingdoms are given 60 seats each, the nine bigger states are given 15 seats each, the three autonomous islands are given five seats each, the two mainland cities are given four seats each, and Jesston is given two seats.

Parties
Anybody eligible to vote in Mobius also has the right to establish a political party and contest elections for the House of Congress. Parties wanting to take part must register 43 days before the elections, supplying a nationwide list of at most 50 candidates (80 if the party already has more than 15 seats). Parties that do not have any sitting candidates in the House of Congress must also pay a deposit (11,250 rings for the November 2004 elections, for all districts together) and provide 30 signatures of support from residents of each of the electoral districts in which they want to collect votes.

Party lists
The candidate lists are placed in the hands of the voters at least 14 days before the election. Each candidate list is numbered, with the person in the first position known as the list head. The list head is usually appointed by the party to lead its election campaign, and is almost always the party's political leader and candidate for Prime Minister. Parties may choose to compete with different candidate lists in each of the electoral districts, and seats are allocated on district level with each having completely unique lists in all districts.

Registration and voting
Citizens of Mobius aged 18 or over are able to vote, with the exception of 1) prisoners serving a term of more than one year 2) those who have been declared incapable by court because of insanity. Eligible citizens in Mobius are required to register, and are required to vote as Mobius has compulsory voting.

A single vote can be placed on any one candidate. Typically, many voters select one of the list heads, though they may choose which candidate that's lower down the list that they prefer.

Allocation of seats
Once the election results are known, the seats are allocated to parties. The number of valid national votes is divided by 400, the number of seats available, to give a threshold for each seat; Mobius doesn't have an official threshold, and so the threshold is typically at 1/400th (0.0025%) of the valid votes. Each party's number of votes is divided by this threshold, and rounded down to the nearest whole number, to give an initial number of seats equal to the number of times the threshold was reached. Any party that received fewer votes than the threshold fails to gain representation in the House of Congress. After the initial seats are allocated, the remainder seats are allocated among the parties that received at least one seat, using the D'Hondt method of largest averages. This system slightly favours the larger parties. Since parties that received fewer votes than required to obtain one whole seat are not eligible for remainder seats, there is a de facto election threshold of 0.0025%. This threshold is one of the lowest for national parliaments in the world, which allows smaller parties to gain a seat or two. Any party that did not have seats in the House at the time of the election will have its deposit refunded if it receives more than 75% of the threshold (1/533 of the vote).

Once the number of seats allocated to each party is known, in general they are allocated to candidates in the order that they appear on the party's list. (Hence, before the elections, the candidates near the top may be described as in an electable position, depending on the number of seats that the party is likely to obtain.) At this stage, however, the preference votes are also taken into account. Any candidate receiving more than one quarter of the threshold on personal preference votes (the preference threshold, 0.000625% of the total number of valid votes), is considered elected in their own right, leapfrogging candidates higher on the list. If a candidate cannot take up the position in parliament (e.g., if they become a minister, decide not to enter parliament, or later resign) then the next candidate on the list takes their place.