The Constitution provides that the National Assembly has 90 deputies. Their term of office lasts four years. Deputies are elected in accordance with the National Assembly Elections Act, which was adopted in 1992. This legislation sets out a proportional electoral system with some elements of the majority system, which means that it enables proportional political representation in the National Assembly.
For electoral purposes Slovenia is divided into eight electoral units, each of which elect 11 deputies (a total of 88 deputies). Each electoral unit is further divided into 11 electoral districts. Lists of candidates must contain at least six and at most 11 candidates for each electoral unit. Electoral units are formed in such a way that the ratio of deputies to inhabitants is approximately constant.
Italian and Hungarian indigenous ethnic communities also live in Slovenia and under the Constitution the members of these communities are entitled to two seats in parliament, one seat for each community.
Candidates standing for election to the National Assembly may be proposed by political parties or voters. A political party nominates candidates in accordance with its own internal rules. A party may, under certain conditions, put up a list in every electoral unit. The law also permits the formation of electoral coalitions where two or more parties present a common list of candidates. This type of list must, however, have a single name.
Voters form a list of candidates by the collection of signatures. In an individual electoral unit a voters' list is accepted if it is supported by at least one hundred voters resident in the electoral unit. This type of list can consist of a number of independent candidates or of one only, in which case that candidate stands in all 11 electoral units.
The determination of the election results takes place in two parts: first in each of the eight electoral units, where the electoral commission publishes the number of directly elected deputies for a particular list. At least 9.1% of votes must be obtained for every directly elected seat. The second part of the determination of the election results takes place at the national level, for the number of remaining, not yet occupied deputy seats (that is, for the deputy seats which have not been directly allotted after the first round of election results in the electoral units). This calculation is based on the d'Hondt system, except that the remainders of the votes are taken into account, a threshold is also set for the second round, and only lists which have already obtained at least three direct seats can take part in this allocation of seats. Thus 88 deputies are elected from the lists and two deputies are elected by the members of the Italian and Hungarian indigenous ethnic communities.