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Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Lawmakers Tuesday passed the 2016 elections draft law after a marathon debate of the keystone reform legislation on the agenda of the Lower House's current session.

The bill divides the Kingdom into 23 electoral districts, one for each of the 12 governorates, except for Amman which was split into five districts, Irbid into four and Zarqa into two, while each of the three Badia districts (northern, central and southern) was considered a governorate.

The draft allocates 115 seats for the constituencies and 15 seats for a women’s quota: one seat for each governorate and one seat for each badia district.

It stipulates that running for elections for women’s seats has to be within lists without affecting the maximum limit of candidates in the list.

On the third day of the debate, MPs, meeting in a session, chaired by Speaker Atef Tarawneh and attended by Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour, endorsed the bill, which adopts the open proportional list system, including article 47 that sets the mechanism that defines the winners of the parliamentary seats.

Under the article, a list wins seats in a district based on what it had achieved of the total percentage of votes cast, and the seats won will be distributed among the ticket members depending on the number of votes each candidate has garnered.

It also stipulates that a female candidate is declared winner of the seat allocated for women in each governorate based on the highest number of votes she had won in her own district.

The MPs also endorsed a key provision that bars personnel of the Jordan Armed Forces- Arab Army and Intelligence, Public Security, Gendarmerie and Civil Defence Departments from voting while in actual service, and that their names will not be on the voters' lists, except the civilian recruits.

The president of the Opinion and Legislation Bureau, Nofan Ajarmeh, had earlier approved the right to vote of civilians working in the military service under contracts.