The Venezuelan Chamber of Deputies (Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

: Cámara de Diputados) was the lower house of Venezuela

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

's legislative under its 1961 constitution; the Venezuelan Senate

Venezuelan Senate

The Venezuelan Senate was the upper house of Venezuela's legislative under its 1961 constitution. Under the 1999 constitution, the bicameral system was replaced by the unicameral National Assembly of Venezuela....

 was the upper house. Under the 1999 constitution

Constitution of Venezuela

||The Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is the current and twenty-sixth constitution of Venezuela. It was drafted in mid-1999 by a constitutional assembly that had been created by popular referendum. Adopted in December 1999, it replaced the 1961 Constitution - the longest...

, the bicameral system was replaced by the unicameral National Assembly of Venezuela

National Assembly of Venezuela

The National Assembly is the legislative branch of the Venezuelan government. It is a unicameral body made up of a variable number of members, who are elected by "universal, direct, personal, and secret" vote partly by direct election in state-based voting districts, and partly on a state-based...

.

At the Venezuelan parliamentary election, 1993, the Chamber saw the introduction of a mixed member proportional representation

Mixed member proportional representation

Mixed-member proportional representation, also termed mixed-member proportional voting and commonly abbreviated to MMP, is a voting system originally used to elect representatives to the German Bundestag, and nowadays adopted by numerous legislatures around the world...

 system, modelled on the German system, with some variations. This replaced the previous "closed-list proportional representation system [which had] led to an extremely party-centered system." The traditionally dominant Democratic Action

Democratic Action

Democratic Action is a centrist Venezuelan political party established in 1941. The party and its antecedents played an important role in the early years of Venezuelan democracy, and led the government during Venezuela's first democratic period...

 and COPEI

COPEI

Copei – Social Christian Party of Venezuela is a third way political party in Venezuela. The name stands for Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente...

 "supported it because it looked the most like the system under which they had prospered".

"Seats for the Chamber of Deputies were allocated to each state on the basis of its population. Since 1970 a number of citizens equal to 0.55% of the population is entitled to a deputy, but since 1993 no state can have fewer than three deputies. A quota for additional seats in the Chamber of Deputies is calculated by dividing the total number of votes cast by the number of deputies determined by the size of the population. The number of votes received by each party nationally for deputies is divided by this result, and the difference between the seats already won and this final result is the number of additional seats awarded to the party. As in the Senate, there has always been a limit to the total number of additional seats any given party can receive. (Since 1980 no party has been allowed more than five additional seats in the Chamber of Deputies.)"

At the Chamber's last election in 1998

Venezuelan parliamentary election, 1998

Parliamentary elections were held in Venezuela on 8 November 1998. Democratic Action won a plurality of seats, winning 61 of the 207 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 21 of the 54 seats in the Senate. Voter turnout was 54.5% in the Senate elections and 52.7% in the Chamber...

, it had 207 members.