Chamber of Deputies (Brazil)
The Chamber of Deputies () is a federal legislative body and the lower house of the National Congress of Brazil. The chamber comprises 513 deputies, who are elected by proportional representation to serve four-year terms. The current President of the Chamber is the Deputy Arthur Lira (PP-AL), who was elected on 1 February 2021. Structure The number of deputies elected is proportional to the size of the population of the respective state (or of the Federal District) as of 1994. However, no delegation can be made up of less than eight or more than seventy seats. Thus the least populous state elects eight federal deputies and the most populous elects seventy. These restrictions favour the smaller states at the expense of the more populous states and so the size of the delegations is not exactly proportional to population. Elections to the Chamber of Deputies are held every four years, with all seats up for election. Federal representation A census held every 10 years by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics is used as the basis for the distribution of the seats. Proportionality is followed as a principle, with the exception that there should be a minimum of eight (8)