General Election, 5 November 2024

Palau held presidential and legislative elections on 5 November 2024. The president is elected through a two-round system and can serve for two consecutive four-year terms. The National Congress is bicameral and contains a Senate with 13 seats and a House of Delegates with 16 seats. House of Delegates’ members are elected for four years through single-member constituencies reflecting the 16 states of Palau. The Senate is directly elected, for four-year terms, via block vote through one national constituency. Although not legally regulated, there are no political parties in Palau (Freedom House 2024; IFES 2024). The electoral management body in Palau is the independent Palau Electoral Commission (PEC) (ACE n.d.).

Absentee voters based in Taiwan saw delays in ballot delivery. The ballots were sent out on 15 October but were reported as missing on 5 November – the date which they must be postmarked. The delay was caused by a court challenge regarding plan to reapportion electoral districts (Olkeriil Ngirudelsang 2024b; Island Times, 2024a). 

In July 2024 a constitutional issue was raised with the PEC and Attorney General regarding presidential candidate Tommy Remengesau Jr., who had previously served as president in 2000–2008 and 2012–2020. The Palauan constitution (art. 8(4) states that ‘A person may not serve as President for more than two consecutive terms’ (Palau 1981). On this ground—interpreting the rule as not providing for a break between more than two terms—Senator Inabo argued Remengesau was barred from running (Olkeriil Ngirudelsang 2024a). In early September, on a legal opinion from the Attorney General, the PEC confirmed that Remengesau was eligible (Reklai 2024a).

Palau saw a spike in cyber activity a few days before the election, following a large cyber-attack that took place in March 2024. The Foundation for Defence of Democracies claims the spike in activity was an attack on Palau by China, who saw the election as a chance to promote representatives more aligned with their ambitions, or to try and weaken Palau’s systems and make them more vulnerable to influence operations (Paskal 2024).

Ballot tabulating machines saw an update for this election. A system was introduced whereby ballots could be counted via scanning as they were cast, as well as a new electronic display board presenting live results to the public and over the radio (Reklai 2024b).

Voter turnout was 44.41 per cent, a decrease compared to the 2020 election which had a turnout of 60.9 per cent (International IDEA n.d.). Incumbent President Whipps won re-election with 4,300 votes against Remengesau’s 3,100 votes, according to the preliminary results (France24 2024; Island Times, 2024b). In the House of Delegates, seven new representatives were elected and nine remained, while in the Senate eight remained and five new Senators were elected (Journal of Democracy n.d.). Four of the 16 House of Delegates members are now women (25 per cent), as compared with just one in the 2020 parliament (6.3 per cent) (IPU n.d.).