Talk:Chamber of Representatives (Belgium)

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"Of the total of 150 Representatives, 88 are elected directly by the Flemish electorate and 62 by the Francophone voters". Do we have a source on this? Evilbu 22:39, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I have no source. The 88-62 seemed "fixed" to me. I believe the francophone votes in BHV are simply added to the votes obtained in Brussels. The francophone votes in BHV are used to partially determine the attribution of francophone seats in Brussels. I am not sure of this. This is what I thought/think. Berchemboy 11:02, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I have a source :). .  It's in Dutch.  If you don't speak Dutch, but you do speak French, I can fetch you a French version instead.(just ask me).  Essentially, it says that- in BHV- they first add up all the votes for Frenchspeaking parties, and all the votes for Dutchspeaking parties.  At this stage, they still ignore the imposed lower bounds.  Considering their ratio, they allocate proportional numbers of those 22 seats to French- and Dutchspeaking parties.  Then they add up the number given to the Dutchspeaking group with the 7 seats for Flemish Brabant, and analogously, they add up the number given to the Frenchspeaking group with the 5 seats for Walloon Brabant.
 * I don't know the exact number, but this procedure is said to cost the Flemish people a few seats in the federal parliament.
 * In short : there is no fixed number of francophone candidates in the federal parliament.

Evilbu 22:28, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Requested move
I think this article should be moved back to "Belgian Chamber of Representatives". I believe "People's Representative" is too literal a translation of the Dutch term "Volksvertegenwoordiger", which can (just as the French "Représentant") be translated simply as "Representative". --Ganchelkas 13:49, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I have added this proposed move to the list of requested moves.--Ganchelkas 14:14, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

This article has been renamed as the result of a move request. --Stemonitis 15:29, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Language groups
So, a little more research gave me an answer to my question about the language groups. The number in each isn't a hard number, mostly because of the billingual nature of Brussels. But also because it's theoretically possible to have people from any language group in any of the regions. I think that probably needs to be made more clear. Also, there probably needs to be mention of the case of the Sint-Genesius-Rode electoral canton (kieskanton), which appears to function as a special-case constituency for the Chamber and which was created in 2014 as a compromise over a language issue. It is geographically included in the Flemish Brabant federal constituency, but voters get a choice of both Francophone (Brussels Region) and Flemish (Vlaamse Brabant) lists, unlike in the rest of the federal consistuency. It's probably even worthy to craete an article for Sint-Gensius-Rode electoral canton, or at least add it to the municipality's article.--Criticalthinker (talk) 06:01, 17 June 2024 (UTC)