Open list in the context of "Ley de lemas"

House of Councillors elections were held in Japan on Sunday 10 July 2016 to elect 121 of the 242 members of the upper house of the National Diet, for a term of six years. As a result of the election, the Liberal Democratic Party–Komeito coalition gained ten seats for a total of 145 (60% of all seats in the house), the largest coalition achieved since the size of the house was set at 242 seats.

76 members were elected by single non-transferable vote (SNTV) and first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting in 45 multi- and single-member prefectural electoral districts; for the first time, there were two combined (gōku) single-member districts consisting of two prefectures each, Tottori-Shimane and Tokushima-Kōchi. This change and several other reapportionments were part of an electoral reform law passed by the Diet in July 2015 designed to reduce the maximum ratio of malapportionment in the House of Councillors below 3. The nationwide district which elects 48 members by D'Hondt proportional representation with most open lists remained unchanged.

An electoral list is a grouping of candidates for election, usually found in proportional or mixed electoral systems, but also in some plurality electoral systems. An electoral list can be registered by a political party (a party list) or can constitute a group of independent candidates (an electoral citizens' list, or civic list). Lists can be open, in which case electors have some influence over the ranking of the winning candidates, or closed, in which case the order of candidates is fixed at the registration of the list.

Electoral lists are required for party-list proportional representation systems.

Closed list describes the variant of party-list systems where voters can effectively vote for only political parties as a whole; thus they have no influence on the party-supplied order in which party candidates are elected. If voters had some influence, that would be called an open list. Closed list systems are still commonly used in party-list proportional representation, and most mixed electoral systems also use closed lists in their party list component. Many countries, however have changed their electoral systems to use open lists to incorporate personalised representation to their proportional systems.

In closed list systems, each political party has pre-decided who will receive the seats allocated to that party in the elections, so that the candidates positioned highest on this list tend to always get a seat in the parliament while the candidates positioned very low on the closed list will not. However, the candidates "at the water mark" of a given party are in the position of either losing or winning their seat depending on the number of votes the party gets. "The water mark" is the number of seats a specific party can be expected to achieve. The number of seats that the party wins, combined with the candidates' positions on the party's list, will then determine whether a particular candidate will get a seat.

Elections in Albania consist of parliamentary elections and local elections for the mayors and municipal councils of Albania's 61 municipalities; they are mandated by the Constitution and legislation enacted by Parliament and operated by the Central Election Commission (KQZ). The Parliament (Kuvendi) has 140 members elected for four-year terms. The president is elected by parliament.

The Electoral Code (Albanian: Kodi Zgjedhor) is the primary law regulating both elections and referendums. It is adopted and amended by the parliament with a three-fifths supermajority. For general (parliamentary) elections, legislation currently makes provision for proportional representation with partially open lists. A national electoral threshold of 1% is applied. For the first time in 2025, the diaspora residing outside of Albania were allowed to vote by mail.

Vestfold is one of the 19 multi-member constituencies of the Storting, the national legislature of Norway. The constituency was established in 1921 following the introduction of proportional representation for elections to the Storting. It is conterminous with the county of Vestfold. The constituency currently elects six of the 169 members of the Storting using the open party-list proportional representation electoral system. At the 2025 parliamentary election it had 191,631 registered electors.

Ceuta is one of the 59 constituencies (Spanish: circunscripciones) represented in the Senate of Spain, the upper chamber of the Spanish parliament, the Cortes Generales. The constituency elects two senators. Its boundaries correspond to those of the Spanish autonomous city of Ceuta. The electoral system uses open list partial block voting, with electors voting for individual candidates instead of parties. Electors can vote for up to two candidates.

Melilla is one of the 59 constituencies (Spanish: circunscripciones) represented in the Senate of Spain, the upper chamber of the Spanish parliament, the Cortes Generales. The constituency elects two senators. Its boundaries correspond to those of the Spanish autonomous city of Melilla. The electoral system uses open list partial block voting, with electors voting for individual candidates instead of parties. Electors can vote for up to two candidates.