Chamber of Deputies of Chile

The Chamber of Deputies (Cámara de Diputadas y Diputados) is the lower house of Chile's bicameral Congress. Its organisation and its powers and duties are defined in articles 42 to 59 of Chile's current constitution. Deputies must: be aged at least 21; not be disqualified from voting; have finished secondary school or its equivalent; and have lived in the corresponding electoral district for at least two years prior to the election. Since 2017, Chile's congress has been elected through open list proportional representation under the D'Hondt method. Before 2017, a unique binomial system was used. These system rewards coalition slates. Each coalition could run two candidates for each electoral district's two Chamber seats. Typically, the two largest coalitions in a district divided the seats, one each, among themselves. Only if the leading coalition ticket out-polls the second-place coalition by a margin of more than two-to-one did the winning coalition gain both seats. with seats allocated using the simple quotient. The Chamber of Deputies meets in Chile's National Congress located in the port city of Valparaíso, some 120 km west of the capital, Santiago. The Congress building in Valparaíso replaced the old National Congress, located in downtown Santiago, in 1990 On 11 March 2022, it was agreed that the Presidency of the Chilean Chamber of Deputies would rotate between the Party for Democracy (PPD), Communist Party (PC), Christian Democratic Party (DC), Party of the People (PDG), the Broad Front (FA) and the Liberal Party (PL). Likewise, the first and second vice-presidencies were assigned to people who are members of the PR, FA, PS, PC, DC and PPD.