In 1920, on April 17, elections to Latvia’s Constitutional Assembly began – the first universal, equal, direct, secret and proportional parliamentary elections in the new Republic of Latvia. Voting continued on April 18, and about 85 percent of registered voters took part. The elected Constitutional Assembly became Latvia’s first democratically elected national representative body – it drafted the Constitution, laid the foundations of agrarian reform and established the basis of the parliamentary state system.

The elections took place just after the decisive phase of the Latvian War of Independence, when the state had to secure not only its borders but also legitimate authority. The work of the Constitutional Assembly linked the independence won during the war with a democratic constitutional order.