FACTBOX - Israeli electoral procedures

(Reuters) - Following were voting statistics and procedures for Israel's February 10 election, in which the 120 seats in the single-chamber parliament are allocated by proportional representation to national party lists of candidates.

-- Some 5.3 million people were eligible to vote, at 9,263 polling stations. Some 65.2 percent of them cast a ballot. By noon (10 a.m. British time) on Wednesday, votes from 99 percent of polling stations had been counted. However, about 175,000 votes, or some 5 percent of the total cast, had yet to be tallied. These were mainly from the army, prisons and stations for disabled voters.

-- The count so far gave the centrist Kadima party led by Tzipi Livni 28 seats to 27 for the right-wing Likud of Benjamin Netanyahu. However, still uncounted votes, notably among the traditionally right-voting army, could change things. So could reallocations of votes from the 20 or so parties that fail to win the 2 percent of the national vote required to take seats.

-- Results are expected on Wednesday but they are certified as official only when published on February 18 in the gazette.

-- The 120 seats in the single-chamber Knesset are allocated by proportional representation to party lists which secure seats after passing a threshold of 2 percent of the national vote.

-- Israel's president, currently Shimon Peres, holds consultations with parties, usually within several days of the election, and picks a legislator to try to form a government.

-- Traditionally, the task goes to the leader of the party that won the most votes. The prime minister-designate has 42 days to form a cabinet and win parliamentary approval. If he or she fails, the president can ask another legislator to try to put together a team. Israel has always been ruled by coalition governments, since no one party has ever won enough votes in an election to secure a parliamentary majority of its own.

-- Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, already serving in a caretaker capacity since resigning in September in a corruption scandal, remains in office until a new government is sworn in.

(Source: Central Elections Committee for the 18th Knesset)

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller, Editing by Alastair Macdonald)