Introduction Following the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) assumed power and suspended the country’s constitution. A referendum held on March 19, 2011 approved amendments to the 1971 constitution regarding parliamentary and presidential elections. On March 30, 2011, the SCAF issued a Constitutional Declaration (see Annex 1), which laid out the constitutional framework that will govern Egypt until a new constitution can be drafted and approved by a constitutional referendum.2 The Constitutional Declaration included articles approved in the referendum and new articles put forth by the SCAF which were based on their equivalents in the 1971 constitution. Between the time when the Constitutional Declaration was issued and elections were held, the parliamentary electoral system underwent numerous and significant legal revisions amid intense debate among various stakeholders. The SCAF did not settle the details of the system to be used for these elections until early October 2011.3 Elections were held shortly thereafter for both houses of the Egyptian Parliament, the People’s Assembly (PA) and the Shura Council (SC), from November 2011 to February 2012.4 The parliamentary elections resulted in Islamist parties gaining a large majority in each house. In the PA, the Democratic Alliance for Egypt (led by the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party, or FJP) and the Islamist Bloc (led by the Al-Nour Party) secured a combined 70 percent of elected seats. In the SC, they won a combined 83 percent of elected seats. Following parliamentary elections, the first and second rounds of the presidential election were held on May 23-24 and June 16-17. Mohammed Morsi, the candidate from the Freedom and Justice Party, won the presidency. However, on June 14, two days prior to the second round of the presidential election, the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) responded to several pending court cases by issuing decisions declaring that the electoral system used for the PA elections as unconstitutional, and invalidating the SCAF’s Decree-Law 17/2012 that suspended political rights for those who held certain official positions in the last 10 years of the Mubarak era. In response to the SCC’s rulings and prior to handing power to the newly-elected president on June 30, the SCAF issued a Constitutional Addendum on June 17 that amended key provisions of the March 2011 Constitutional Declaration.5 This briefing paper examines Egypt’s electoral processes in 2011-12, as well as the SCC’s judgments and their impact on Egypt’s electoral framework. 2 The referendum and the 2011 Constitutional Declaration are analyzed in the IFES Briefing Paper, Elections in Egypt: Lessons of the 2011 Constitutional Referendum and the Constitutional Declaration. April 26, 2011. 3 For an analysis of the 2011 PA electoral system, please see IFES Briefing Paper, Elections in Egypt: Analysis of the 2011 Parliamentary Electoral System. November 1, 2011. 4 Of the 508 seats in the PA, 10 members were appointed by the SCAF. Two-thirds of the 498 elected members (332 members) were selected by a closed party list proportional representation (PR) system from 46 electoral districts. The remaining 166 individual candidate seats in 83 two-member districts were won by candidates who either received more 4 than 50 percent of the votes in the first round, or won the second round run-off election. Of the 270 seats in the SC, 90 will be appointed by the new president, and 180 were elected under a system that mirrors the PA system: two-thirds of the 180 elected members (120 members) were elected from 30 districts from closed party lists by proportional representation, while 60 individual candidate members were elected from 30 districts. 5 Notably, the addendum did not alter Article 61 of the Constitutional Declaration, which provides that the SCAF would continue to exercise power “until a time at which the People’s Assembly and the Shura Council assume their responsibilities and the president of the republic is elected and assumes his/her position.” IFES Page 2 of 18