Collage by Jaimee Lee Haddad
You’re Lebanese. You live abroad. You want to vote. And in 2022, for once, your vote actually had an impact.
Now, some politicians seem to want to make sure it loses it again.
On Monday, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri blocked a proposed amendment to Lebanon’s electoral law to allow expats to vote for all 128 MPs, just like they did in 2018 and 2022. Instead, he wants to revive an old clause of the law that would confine diaspora voters to just six reserved seats.
So what does the law really state? Why does this matter now? And how did Lebanese living abroad even vote in the first place?
Let’s break it down.
1. When did the Lebanese abroad start voting and under what law?
The right for Lebanese abroad to vote in national elections was first introduced in the 2017 electoral law. Before that, if you lived outside Lebanon, you had to fly back home if you wanted to cast a ballot.
The 2017 law allowed expats to vote from abroad through embassies and consulates.
The law also created a plan to set aside six seats in Parliament specifically for expat voters with one seat for each of Lebanon’s major religious communities (one Maronite, one Greek Orthodox, one Greek Catholic, one Sunni, one Shiite, one Druze), instead of allowing them to vote for Parliament’s 128 MPs under the districts voters are originally from.
These six seats were supposed to be filled by voters living abroad, grouped into newly created electoral “constituencies” spread across continents like Europe, the Americas, Africa and Australia. But the law itself remains unclear, lacking a clause on how the mechanism is to be applied.
Here’s the thing, though: no constituency was ever actually set up.
This brings us to our next question.
2. So how did the 2018 and more recently 2022 expat vote actually take place, and why change the law now?
In both 2018 and 2022, Lebanese expats voted for the full 128 members of Parliament, just like voters inside the country, because the six-seat system wasn’t yet in place, and no district was ever created.
This allowed the Lebanese diaspora to vote in their original home districts, based on their official family registration in Lebanon. This meant their votes were counted toward the 128-seat Parliament, not a separate “expat-only” bloc.
In order to do so, voters had to:
- Register in advance with embassies or consulates abroad (during a window set by the Lebanese Interior Ministry),
- Vote at polling stations abroad (usually embassies or consulate buildings or other locations provided by host countries), and
- Have their ballots counted in their home districts in Lebanon, based on their official civil registration (like Zahle, Tripoli, Baabda, etc.)
So if someone is registered in Aley, for example, but lives in Paris, they’ll vote at the Lebanese consulate in Paris, and that vote is counted in the Aley district, alongside the ballots cast in Lebanon.
Now, with the next elections set for 2026, it seems there’s a push mainly from Hezbollah, Amal and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) to finally activate the six-seat plan, and lock diaspora voters in it.
But 68 MPs, who represent more than the Parliament’s majority, from the Lebanese Forces, Kataeb, Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), Change bloc, independents and other blocs are trying to amend the law and make the district-based system permanent. Their draft law, submitted on May 9, would abolish the six-seat clause entirely.
Berri, however, refused to put it on the legislative agenda for the June 30 session. Instead, he sent it to a subcommittee.
If nothing changes, the six-seat setup could quietly become reality in 2026. This would shrink the diaspora’s voice right when it’s starting to gain momentum.
3. Why are some parties trying to limit the diaspora vote to six seats?
Mainly because the diaspora vote didn’t go their way, and the voter base abroad is growing fast.
In 2022, around 130,000 Lebanese abroad voted, nearly triple the 2018 turnout. Those votes helped elect at least seven MPs, many of them independents, anti-establishment candidates and Hezbollah opposition. Some traditional parties saw sharp drops in their support:
- Amal-Hezbollah’s share of the expat vote fell from 20 percent in 2018 to 13 percent in 2022.
- The FPM’s share dropped from 16 percent to 7 percent.
And it’s not just about the numbers. It’s about who the diaspora voters are and how they vote.
Many aren’t long-established migrants detached from local politics — they’re young people who left in the past few years, pushed out by the 2019 economic collapse, the 2020 Beirut port explosion and repeated waves of crisis, insecurity and wars.
The last two election numbers show that these voters have consistently backed opposition, reformist and independent candidates more than voters inside Lebanon. In several districts, they tipped tight races and helped reshape the balance of power.
Now, with even more diaspora voters expected to register in 2026 — possibly 200,000 to 300,000 — the old guard is spooked. Limiting the diaspora to six seats would dramatically shrink their impact and cut off one of the most politically independent and mobilized segments of the electorate.
As it stands, the proposed amendment to preserve full voting rights for the diaspora is stuck with the parliamentary subcommittee.
