All DPRD members must be elected as members of political parties. From the
1971 election until
2024, elections for DPRD were held simultaneously with those for the national legislature, the
DPR. Members are elected for five-year terms without
term limits.. An exception applies for the elected members of the 2024-2029 period, whose term is extended until 2031 due to the new requirement of a 2-2.5 year gap between national elections and local elections. Since the
2004 election, DPRD members have been elected through an
open list proportional representation system, using the
Sainte-Laguë method to allocate seats since the
2019 election. The national
parliamentary threshold, used in elections to the DPR, does not apply to DPRD elections. Although the
2014 election initially proposed a 3.5 percent threshold for both DPR and DPRD, the
Constitutional Court of Indonesia struck down the threshold for DPRDs in 2013, limiting it to DPR elections only. The
Indonesian electoral law of 2017 sets the number of DPRD seats according to the population of each region, as defined in the ranges below: The seats are also distributed in electoral districts with 3-12 members each. The law requires these electoral districts to follow the administrative borders of regencies/cities (provincial) or districts (regency/city) if possible, though partition of a subdivision into multiple districts is allowed if not possible otherwise. Exceptions to the above are DPRD I of
Aceh and
Jakarta, which has 81 and 106 seats allocated, respectively. These native Papuan members are not allowed to be members of political parties and must have not participated in the previous legislative election. Sitting DPRD members are required to resign their positions in order to run for a legislative position from a different party from their prior affiliation or any executive position, although members-elect who had not been sworn in are not required to do so. If a sitting member resigned, died, or is otherwise removed, and has more than six months left in the term, a replacement is appointed to complete the term. The replacement is selected from the same political party, specifically, the legislative candidate who ran in the same electoral district and received the next highest vote count but did not qualify. ==Structure==