Item I.2.5 of the Code of the Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters provides as follows:

« Legal rules requiring a minimum percentage of persons of each gender among candidates should not be considered as contrary to the principle of equal suffrage if they have a constitutional basis ».

The following completes this principle :
“a. Implementation of the parity principle may lead to admit:

1. Elections by a list system
- The obligation to ensure a composition of the candidates’ lists alternating men and women
- The refusal to register lists which do not respect such an alternating composition

2. Elections in single-member constituencies
- The obligation to ensure a balanced percentage of women and men amongst candidates of the same party
- Dissuasive sanctions in case of non-respect of this obligation

b. Suffrage should be individual and secret, which excludes any form of “family voting”, whether committed in the form of group voting (where a [male] family member accompanies one or more [women] relatives into a polling booth), in the form of open voting (when family groups vote together in the open), or in the form of proxy voting (where a [male] family member collects ballot papers belonging to one or more [women] relatives and marks those papers as he sees fit).