Updated | PN presents judicial protest for recount of 13th and 8th district votes

The Nationalist Party has issued a statement announcing that it has presented a judicial protest before the Constitutional Court so that the votes for the Thirteenth District are recounted with urgency.

The party said that in the Gozo district, 10 votes that should have gone to PN candidate Paul Buttigieg were instead lost, which led to the PN losing the district to Labour by nine votes.

Because of the mistake was committed counts which had already been closed, counting can only start once again by order of the Constitutional Court.

The announcement comes in the wake of a historic win for Labour, as it managed to scoop up a Gozitan seat majority instead of the usual two it managed to secure in the traditionally blue locality.

Contacted by MaltaToday for a reaction, party spokesperson Kurt Farrugia said "it was the PN's decision to resort to court action. We await the court's decision if their request if upheld."

Since then, the PN also presented a judicial protest calling for a recount of the 8th District votes, after a batch of roughly 50 votes that should have been allocated to PN candidate Claudette Buttigieg on the first count instead went to fellow PN candidate Michael Asciak by mistake.

The mistake was discovered at the 13th count when Asciak's first count votes were about to be redistributed to other candidates. Counting stopped for roughly three hours on Monday evening, but resumed at around 11pm.