Explainer | How PN will gain four additional seats

As things stand, Labour is set to have a 13 seat majority in the new legislature. If the judicial protests filed by the PN to have a recount on the eighth and thirteenth districts it lost by a whisker are not upheld, the 13-seat majority would have to be adjusted according to the Constitutional amendment on proportionality meaning that the PN would be adjudicated an extra 4 seats to bring down Labour's majority to 9 seats.

For those of you asking why the PN could be awarded an additional four seats, here is why: in 2007, a constitutional amendment was introduced to ensure proportionality. This is triggered when only two parties elect MPs and the party with an absolute majority of votes elects an absolute majority of MPs which is not proportionate to the share of the votes obtained by that party.

If Labour elects 39 seats to the PN's 26, the Electoral Commission would need to award a number of seats to the PN to ensure that the difference in seats is proportional to the difference in votes.

The commission decides whether a party, in this case the PN, has a disproportionately lower share of seats, by establishing the average number of votes used by both parties to elect each of its candidates. This is done by dividing the total number of votes obtained at the first count to all the candidates of each party, by the number of candidates declared elected by each party.

This means that if Labour's votes total 167,533, it would be divided by 39, giving us an average of 4,295 votes per seat. If the PN's tally is 132,426, its average would be of 5,093.

So the PN has a right to increase its seats to ensure that the same proportion is used for both parties. This is done by applying the lowest average, 4,295, to determine the final number of Nationalist MPs by dividing its first count tally by the lowest average, giving us 30.8. Deducting the 26 seats the PN has secured, the party must be awarded 4.8 seats to guarantee the same proportionality. Since the Constitution stipulates that the total number of seats in Parliament has to be odd, the figure is rounded down to 4, resulting in a total of 69 seats, 39 for Labour and 30 for the PN.

Other amendments were introduced to cover a number of scenarios, including the possibility of having a third party elected (but not a fourth or fifth).

These amendments have been met with some opposition because, if a third party is elected and one party obtains an absolute majority, extra seats are awarded to reflect the gap existing bet­ween the votes at the first count of the absolute majority party from the votes of all the other parties put together.

However, this mechanism does not apply if no party obtains an absolute majority, meaning that the party with the biggest number of seats gets to govern if it has more seats than the other parties combined, even if the party with most seats does not have the majority of votes.

Some observers and academics call this possibility, "perverse," however Malta's third party, Alternattiva Demokratika could be justified in using that term to describe their 2013 result.

Despite earning around 5,500 first count votes, significantly more than the average worked out to ensure proportionality for the two big parties, the Greens will not be represented in Parliament.

Speaking to MaltaToday, Labour MP Evarist Bartolo said that Alternattiva Demokratika's situation deserves to be addressed, augured that the new Labour government looks into the electoral law to ensure that all parties are granted proportional representation.