Description of government structure:

• Chief of State: President Baron WAQA
• Head of Government: President Baron WAQA
• Assembly: Nauru has a unicameral Parliament with 19 seats.

Description of electoral system:

• The President is elected by parliament to serve a 3-year term.
• In the Parliament 19 members are elected through a Borda Count system to serve 3-year terms.
• Elections in Nauru are formally non-partisan. Nauru uses a modified Borda Count system called the Dowdall system. Key differences from the theoretical Borda system are that (1) this is applied in multimember constituencies and (2) the values assigned to a voter's preferences are fractions of a full point. (e.g. A voter's first preference carries a value of 1, her third preference a value of 1/3, and so on.) As with a single-winner Borda system, the N candidates with the highest vote totals win N seats in each district. There are six two-seat districts, one-three seat district, and one four-seat district. A voter must use all her rankings for his/her ballot to be valid.