All you need to know for voting day

Malta joins the rest of the European Union on Saturday 8 June to vote for its representatives in the European Parliament.

We have gathered all the information you need to know before heading to the polling booth in your locality and making your choice.

Voting in Malta is not compulsory and some may opt not to vote. It is a legitimate choice but one we discourage. Nonetheless, if you want to vote here is a quick guide on how to do it, what happens after you’ve marked your ballot, and how the result will be calculated.

Voting time

Polling stations open at 7am and close at 10pm on Saturday 8 June.

Polling stations

The polling station where you have to go and vote is listed on the voting document you received at home or picked up yourself. All government primary schools become makeshift polling stations for the day.

Voting document

Do not forget to take your voting document with you to the polling station. Without a voting document, you will not be able to vote. You cannot vote using your ID card or driving licence.

The 50m line

Outside every polling station you will notice a 50m line sprayed onto the pavement and road. This line delineates the closest distance (50 metres) candidates and their agents can stand to the polling station. This allows voters some peace of mind within the precincts of the polling station.

Polling booth

Once inside the polling station you will be directed to the classroom where your assigned polling booth is to be found. Each room consists of a long table where representatives of the Electoral Commission and the parties sit and a number of polling booths where voters can mark their ballot in privacy.

At the centre of the room will be two ballot boxes – one for the European Parliament election and another for the local council election – where you are expected to deposit your ballot.

The ballot

When entering the polling booth, you hand over your voting document to the officials. They strike off your name from the register and give you a ballot sheet on which you will be expected to mark your voting preferences. The electoral commissioners will rubber stamp the ballot on the backside with the official seal of the Electoral Commission. Representatives of the parties may also stamp the ballot sheet on the rear side. On the front side, the ballot will contain a list of names of the candidates contesting the election.

These are grouped in alphabetical order by political party or grouping, while all independent candidates will be listed on the bottom part. The candidates for the Labour, Nationalist and ADPD parties will be written down in red, blue and green ink respectively. The rest will be in black ink. Next to each candidate name there will be an empty box, where you are expected to write down your voting preference.

Marking the ballot

Malta’s voting system is based on the single transferable vote. This means that you vote by writing down the numbers in ascending order starting from 1. You can vote for all candidates on the ballot; you can vote for just a few; you can just vote for one candidate and stop; you can vote for all the candidates of one political party and stop there; but you can also vote for different candidates from different parties, including independents.

The system allows you to transfer your vote across different candidates.

Be careful however, to write down the numbers clearly and within the box. Do not write over the border of the box, or outside it because this may invalidate your vote. Also, do not mark the ballot paper in any other way because this will invalidate your vote.

Cross-party voting

You may hear officials and activists from the two major parties emphasising the need to vote only for all candidates on the party list. They do so for political reasons to ensure their respective parties elect the most seats. You may obey this instruction; however, it is also your right to disregard these voices and vote across different parties and candidates.

By giving your favourite candidate in one of the big parties your number 1 vote and then giving your 2 to an independent candidate or a candidate from a different party, you will not be spoiling your ballot. Neither will you spoil your ballot if you vote 1 to an independent candidate and continue with your 2, 3 and other numbers on candidates from different parties. Indeed, you can shift between the different candidates at will.

Vote-counting

When polling stations close at 10pm, election officials reconcile the number of voting documents distributed in each polling booth with the number of voting documents collected. The ballot box is then sealed and transported to the counting hall in Naxxar. Boxes are then unsealed and ballots distributed on long tables, where counting agents turn them face down to confirm the presence of the official stamp.

Ballots will then be passed through scanning machines and the scans uploaded on screens where party agents can start tallying the votes.

The result

The EP election produces two results. The first result to emerge early is the strength of the respective parties and independent candidates at first count. This is irrelevant to the final outcome, which determines who the six MEPs are but has political importance because it shows the strength in vote terms of the respective parties. A very accurate indication of this result will be known around an hour or so into the vote scanning exercise because the main political parties will be taking samples and projecting the outcome. In this way, we will know what percentage of votes the parties have achieved and possibly the extent of the vote gap between the major parties.

The second and most crucial result in the EP election is the one that tells us who are the six candidates elected as MEPs. This will take much longer to figure out. It is likely that when the first count is complete, we will have two candidates elected because they would have surpassed the nationwide quota. The process will then drag on to determine how the votes are inherited from each count to the other. It is only by the evening of Sunday that we will have the complete picture of who the six MEPs are.

The quota

The quota is the threshold of votes any candidate would have to reach to be elected. This is worked out through a mathematical formula: The number of all Valid Votes Cast (the votes that are left after spoilt ballots are removed) is divided by 7 (one more than the 6 that have to be elected) plus 1. The quota in the 2019 EP election stood at 37,174 votes. Given that Malta and Gozo are considered as one electoral district for the EP election, the quota is based on nationwide numbers unlike the general election where each of the 13 electoral districts have their own separate quota.

Reaching the quota

The first count gives the total number of number 1 votes each candidate would have achieved. If, as expected, a candidate surpasses the quota they are declared elect on the first count. Elected candidates have to keep the quota in their pigeon hole but any surplus votes above the quota are redistributed according to the second preference (the number 2) on the rest of the candidates.

The inherited votes are then added to the individual candidates’ tallies. If no candidate reaches the quota, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated and their votes are redistributed. This process continues at each count until all six MEPs are elected.

What happened in 2019

Registered voters: 371,643

Votes cast (turnout): 270,022 (72.7%)

Invalid votes: 9,810

Valid votes cast: 260,212

Quota: 37,174

Results in votes

PL: 141,267 (54.3%)

PN: 98,611 (37.9%)

Imperium: 8,238 (3.2%)

PD: 5,276 (2%)

AD: 1,866 (0.7%)

Others: 4,954 (1.9%)

Results in seats

PL: 4

PN: 2