The date for the Legislative Assembly election has been set for 17 September 2017, according to Executive Order No. 50/2017.

A separate Executive Order, No. 49/2017 – published in the Macao SAR Gazette on Monday (13 March) – set the spending cap for each campaigning team for the Legislative Assembly election at 3,549,622 patacas (three million, five hundred and forty nine thousand, and six hundred and twenty two patacas).

The maximum expenditure for each campaigning team was based on a number of factors, including: the latest official estimate of Macao’s total population; the total number of registered voters; and the city’s economic development.

The spending cap per campaigning team should be set at less than 0.004 percent of the Government’s annual average revenue for the past 10 years – as set in the annual Government Budget – according to the Legislative Assembly Election Law.

The Legislative Assembly Election Law stipulates that only political associations and nomination committees have the right to nominate candidate lists for the process of direct election to the Legislative Assembly. Nomination committees must contain 300 to 500 voters, and the names of those people must be on the official list of natural person voters.

Persons interested in setting up a nomination committee can submit an application to the Electoral Affairs Commission for the Legislative Assembly Election, during the period from Thursday (16 March) to 20 June.

Regarding the indirect election for the Legislative Assembly, each nomination committee must be formed by at least 20 percent of the associations in the respective functional constituency. The official lists of natural person voters and of those legal person voters were both published in January.

In addition, the Electoral Affairs Commission for the Legislative Assembly Election is to arrange a briefing in early April to introduce the election regulations and election process to all interested parties. Subsequent to the announcement of the date of the election, the Commission will organise a series of promotional activities related to the election.

At the end of 2016, the number of natural person voters was 307,020, an increase of 10.78 percent, or 29,867 people, compared with the 277,153 natural person voters at the end of 2012. The number of legal person voters for the indirect election remained unchanged at 858.