Ottoman electoral law

The Ottoman Electoral Law was promulgated in December 1876 alongside the Ottoman constitution. The law underwent only minimal amendments in the Second Constitutional Era and was retained by the Republic of Turkey with only slight revisions until 1946. The law was detailed and covered a wide range of electoral matters including-electoral districts, parliamentary contingencies, the preparation of registers, the method of selection and the duties of electoral inspection committees, suffrage requirements and the general conduct of elections. The law also included penal clauses.

Background
The Provincial Law was passed in 1860. Before the Ottoman Electoral Law, the Provincial Law included elections for the neighborhood headmen. It is therefore arguable that elections in the Ottoman Empire began in 1860 and not 1876. Registration was the task of village and neighborhood headmen and religious leaders, a practice which was retained by the Ottoman Electoral Law. In this respect, elections in the fundamental, local level, did not change with the introduction of the Electoral Law.

Electoral structure
All males above the age 25 who were registered at the tax office were entitled to vote. There were exceptions, such as proteges of a foreign government, persons who had filed for bankruptcy and those who had disposed of their property. Prisoners were also eligible unless deprived of their civil rights.

The election process was indirect and featured two stages. One deputy in the Chamber of Deputies represented 50,000 male residents. The provincial subdivision was the sanjak. Inspection units were the kaza. Candidacy for deputy was province-wide. Eligible voters elected secondary candidates (that is two stage voting): one for every 500 primary candidates. The two-stage system reinforced patronage relationships and precluded the election of candidates truly representative of the common people.

Balloting
The election was a staggered and drawn-out process that was not coordinated throughout the empire or even the province. Balloting was based on the multiple-member plurality system. Voters wrote in as many names as there were candidates. A candidate could run either in his province of residence or province of origin. There were rules for secrecy of the ballot and security of tallying and tabulating.

Analysis
In Raoul de la Grasserie's detailed comparative study of electoral systems, the Ottoman electoral system was portrayed favorably to its contemporary Western counterparts due to the extent of suffrage it provided for. In contrast to the contemporary electoral systems of Germany, Russia, Japan, and England, there was no legally stipulated weighted voting, distributed among different social groups.