1) Election Dat e
The King of Thailand Bhumibol on Oct. 19 signed a royal decree to set Dec. 23, 2007 as the date for general election.
2) Voting process
The Election Commission (EC) designated Thailand's 76 provinces into 157 Constituencies and eight Zones.
There are 480 Member of Parliament (MP) seats at the House of Representatives up for grab, 400 of them called constituency MPs, while the rest 80 called party-list or proportionate MPs.
The 2007 Constitution has reduced the number of party-list MPs from 100 as in the previous parliament to 80, bringing down the total number of MP seats from 500 to 480.
Thus on the election day, voters will get two ballot cards, one for party-list MPs voting, the other for electing constituency candidates.
For Constituency MPs, voters will choose one to three candidates that stand for their respective constituencies.
The 80 party-list MPs will come from the eight designated zones, each with 10 MPs. Each zone has an average population of some 7.8 million.
Each party can field up to 10 candidates in each zone to compete for party-list MP seats. All candidates from the same party will have the same number for voters to mark on the ballot card. Each voter can only vote for one party.
The number of MP seats in any zone that a party will get is decided by the proportion of votes it get in the zone.
3) Contesting parties
More than 40 political parties, 4,000 candidates have joined the contest for the 480 Members of Parliament (House of Representatives) seats. The following are major parties in the race (with Thai name in parentheses), followed with name of party leader in the race:
People's Power Party (Palang Prachachon): Samak Sundaravej
Democrat Party (Prachatipat): Abhisit Vejjajiva
For the Motherland Party (Pua Paendin): Suwit Kunkitti
Neutral Democratic Party (Matchima Thippathai): Prachai Leophairatana
Royal People Party (Pracharaj): Sanoh Thienthong
Thai Nation Party (Chart Thai): Banharn Silpaarcha
Thais United National Development Party (Ruam Jai Thai Chat Pattana):
Chettha Thanajaro
4) Eligible voters and expected turnout
There are some 45.1 million eligible voters in Thailand.
Among them some 4.1 million are in Bangkok, while 15.3 million in 19 provinces in the Northeast, 11.3 million in the Central region's 26 provinces, 8.3 million in the 16 provinces of the North, while 5.9 million in the 14 provinces of the South.
During the two-day advance and absentee voting on Dec. 15 to Dec. 16 the turnout of absentee voters, who cast votes out of their home constituencies, was 87.77 percent, with 1.83 million ballots cast out of the registered 2.09 million voters. Meanwhile, some 1.12 million advance voters cast votes in their home constituencies, as they would not appear in the Dec. 23 polls. The total number of absentee and advance voters recorded an all-time high, according to the Election Commission.
However, it is still hard to predict the voter turnout in Sunday 's balloting.
On Aug. 19 this year, only 57.61 percent of eligible voters participated in the first-ever national referendum on the new Constitution 2007.
In previous election, the February 6, 2005 election saw the highest turnout, with 72.55 percent of 44.6 million eligible voters casting their ballots, according to local media group The Nation.
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