The normal term of the House of Representatives is four years. Elections are called when the government loses the parliament's confidence, the governing coalition breaks down, the term of the House of Representatives expires, or when no governing coalition can be formed.
Registration and eligibility All citizens over the age of 18 are eligible to vote. Eligible citizens residing in the Netherlands are
automatically registered through the
municipal population register, while expatriates can permanently register at the municipality of
The Hague provided they have a current Dutch passport or
national ID. Residents of
Aruba,
Curaçao, and
Sint Maarten can only vote if they have spent at least ten years residing in the Netherlands or work for the Dutch civil service. Prisoners serving a term of more than one year are not eligible to vote. From 2009 onwards, mentally incapacitated citizens have regained the right to vote.
Electoral system The Netherlands uses a system of
party-list proportional representation. Seats are allocated among the parties using the
D'Hondt method with an
election threshold of 0.67% (a
Hare quota). Parties may choose to compete with different candidate lists in each of the country's twenty electoral circles. If a party competes with different candidate lists, the seats allocated to the party are subsequently allocated among its different candidate lists using the
largest remainders method. The seats won by a list are first allocated to the candidates who, in preferential votes, have received at least 25% of the Hare quota (effectively ¼ of a seat or 0.17% of the total votes), regardless of their placement on the electoral list. If multiple candidates from a list pass this threshold, their ordering is determined based on the number of votes received. Any remaining seats are allocated to candidates according to their position on the electoral list. From 1973 until 2017, parties were able to form
electoral alliances to increase their share of seats in parliament, allowing parties to overcome some of the bias of the D'Hondt method; however, this practice has since been discontinued. When a vacancy arises, the seat is offered to the next candidate on the candidate list to which the seat was originally allocated.
Formation of governing coalition After all seats are allocated, a series of negotiations take place in order to form a government that, usually, commands a majority in the chamber. Since 2012, the House of Representatives appoints a "scout" to ask the major party leaders about prospective coalitions. On basis of the scout's interviews, the House of Representatives then appoints an
informateur, who checks out possible coalitions, and a
formateur, who leads negotiations. Before 2012, the informateur and formateur were appointed by the
monarch. It typically takes a few months before the
formateur is ready to accept a royal invitation to form a government and become prime minister. All cabinet members must resign from parliament, as the constitution does not allow a cabinet member to simultaneously hold a seat in the House of Representatives. Due to the nationwide party-list system and the low election threshold, a typical House of Representatives has ten or more parties represented. Such fragmentation makes it nearly impossible for one party to win the 76 seats needed for a majority in the House of Representatives. Since the current party-list proportional representation system was introduced in 1917, no party has approached the number of seats needed for an outright majority. This fragmentation also makes it almost prohibitively difficult to win enough seats to govern alone. The highest number of seats won by a single party since then has been 54 out of 150, by the CDA in 1986 and 1989. Between 1891 and 1897, the
Liberal Union was the last party to have an absolute majority of seats in the House of Representatives. All Dutch cabinets since then have been coalitions of two or more parties. ==Meeting place==