Determining and assigning the seats

(1) On the basis of the records of the federal elections authority submitted to them by the provincial elections authorities according to § 105, para 2, the federal elections authority first establishes the party totals for the whole federal territory. 

(2) Parties which have not received a seat in any regional constituency and who have received less than 4% of the valid votes cast are not entitled to receive any seats in the third counting procedure.

(3) In the third counting procedure, all 183 seats, minus the number of seats allocated in the first and second counting procedure to all parties which did not submit a federal list of candidates, are to be distributed amongst the remaining parties, using the elections figure calculated according to § 107, paras 4 and 5.

(4) The party totals have to be written down, side by side and according to amounts; below each total, the result of dividing this number by two, three, four as well as the subsequent fractions are to be written down.

(5) The election figure is the 183rd biggest number when there are 183 seats to be allocated, the 182nd biggest number, when there are 182 seats to be allocated, the 181st biggest of the numbers listed in that way by 181 seats and so on.

(6) Each party receives as many seats as the times the election figure is contained in its total for party votes. In case, according to these calculations, two or more parties are entitled to receive any one specific seat, the decision as to which one receives it is made by drawing lots. When the decision taken in this way leads to a party having the total number of seats discussed in para 7 it receives the seat. When the same happens for more than one party, the decision as to which one of them is to receive the seat in question is made by drawing lots.

(7) When the total number of seats allocated in this way to a party is lower than the number of seats received by this party in the first and second counting procedure, the party is considered as not having brought forward any federal list of candidates. In such a case, the determining procedure illustrated in paras 3 to 6 is to be repeated. 

(8) When the total number of seats allocated in the same way to a party is higher than the number of seats received by this party in the first and the second counting procedure it receives as many additional seats as required to equate these two sum totals.