[ANALYSIS] Electoral reform: another lunge at the duopoly’s hegemony

At 12.7%, the collective third-party vote in the European elections in Malta has been the highest ever registered in a nationwide election since 1962.

But if repeated in a general election, it could well be a result that yields zero seats to third parties, which must win representation in one of Malta’s 13 districts in a system that does not have a national minimum threshold.

On their own steam, third parties have not elected an MP since 1966, except for the two Partit Demokratiku MPs elected after forming the Forza Nazzjonali coalition with the PN in 2017.

And while the Maltese electorate has gravitated towards a duopoly in all post-1966 elections, the constitutional amendments granting a majority of seats to the party with an absolute (1987) and a relative majority of votes (1996) have entrenched the status quo – third-party votes no longer count in determining who gets to govern, as they did before 1987 when their votes could be transferred to other parties if they were not elected.

Despite this major disadvantage, at 3.2% in 2022, the third-party vote was still the highest in any general election since 1966, in a context where it is becoming impossible for the big parties to contain an increasingly pluralistic society in two big containers.

The question remains: should third parties get their act together and use the Single Transferable Vote to get elected and force other parties to change the rules, or should they pass the buck to civil society and force constitutional changes that facilitate this change?

In doing so, there are three factors that proponents of electoral reform need to consider.

1. The STV in Malta: the exception for third parties

The STV was not intended to stop third parties from growing: In Ireland, which has the same system, third parties thrive. But with some notable exceptions, the Maltese have still opted for a duopoly that yields “winner-takes-all” governments.

The STV has been in place in Malta since 1921, ensuring proportional representation by allowing voters to rank candidates, even those from different parties, by preference.

The catch for third parties is the quota they have to reach. To get elected throughout the counting process, a candidate must reach a quota of 16% of votes cast in any district, a regional compartment of villages that makes it hard for any third party with a strong national presence of, say 10%, to surpass.

Despite these obstacles, small parties did win representation. The system was originally intended by the British to prevent the rise of a dominant anti-colonial movement like the Congress Party in India, in both Ireland and Malta.

But Ireland, which has similarly-sized constituencies and a similar electoral system, has elected 8 parties in parliament in its last general election.

Even in Malta, its use led to the emergence of four parties in the 1920s, one of which was the nascent Labour Party, which secured 23% of the vote in its first election.

But even then, the parties eventually coalesced around two blocs, with Labour allying itself with the larger Constitutional Party in a ‘compact’ which saw both parties calling on their voters to continue voting for candidates of the allied party after voting for their own.

Even the 1962 election resulted in five parties securing seats in parliament, including two parties who garnered 9% of the vote and another elected with just 5% of the vote. But one major factor in the 1962 election was the support of the church hierarchy for small parties united under the so-called ‘Umbrella’.

That did not prevent increased polarisation between two major parties in all subsequent elections, a division that reflected Malta’s class structure and the split between a conservative elite aligned with the church hierarchy and a more secular and working-class-based Labour Party. Subsequently, this duopoly was reinforced by the divisive aftermath of the 1981 election and 20 years later, the EU question.

But ever since Malta joined the EU, it was the PN that found it increasingly difficult to hold on to a coalition of voters; and Labour is experiencing similar problems now.

2. ‘Governability’ reforms reinforces winner-takes-all

The constitutional amendments of 1987 and 1996 effectively created two classes of voters: those who win the right to say who governs the country, by choosing the dominant PN or PL, and those who don’t by not voting for them, perpetuating the idea that a vote for a third party is wasted.

In 1981, Labour was elected with a majority of seats – not by the popular vote, which the PN won. The ‘perverted’ result led to a constitutional amendment meant to avoid a repetition – the constitutional changes of 1987 would mean that voters would determine who wins power through first preference votes – the popular vote – and not by all final-counted votes through the STV.

In 1996, this system was further reinforced with amendments that guaranteed that even a party with a relative majority would be able to govern with a majority of seats. It was a major blow for the budding third-party force of Alternattiva Demokratika, whose growth in the early 1990s threatened the ability of the major parties to win an absolute majority.

Effectively the 1996 amendment meant that when a third party wins no seats – say, even if clinching a national vote of 10% – it will be the party with a relative majority that gets to govern, with more seats added to it by force of the Constitution.

But if a third party does win a seat in any district, and other parties only have a relative majority, it will then be the party with a majority of seats that gets to govern. It reinforced the narrative that third parties could be agents of instability for dominant parties.

The system was further fine-tuned in 2007 that ensured the party with the most votes would perforce be granted a proportionate number of seats, rather than just a minimum one-seat majority. But this exposed another major flaw in the system. While the seats of parties elected to parliament could be increased to reflect their vote share, this can never apply to small parties not elected to parliament, even with a sizeable national vote.

Effectively, it means that MPs who get added to the House by dint of this constitutional mechanism could very well represent even fewer voters than third parties left out of parliament.

This problem was exacerbated by more recent amendments aimed at increasing the number of women in parliament, with the addition of female MPs to reach a gender quota in the House – but then this amendment only applies in the case of two parties, ignoring totally the possible election of a third party.

3. Missing: a national quota

Malta’s electoral system has been tweaked over the years to ensure that first-count votes obtained by the political parties determine who is in government, but parliamentary representation remains tied to the district-based system. (Photo: James Bianchi/MaltaToday)

One way of solving this problem is to introduce a national quota and applying the 1996 amendment to all parties who surpass this threshold.

But this raises another question: can a national quota coexist with the STV system?

As shown in reports presented to the Gonzi Commission in the 1990s, the STV can coexist with a national quota. What is lacking is the political will to implement the reform.

In the 1990s, the discussions in the Gonzi Commission included representatives of the PN, PL and AD. Tasked with reviewing the electoral system and proposing updates to enhance fairness and proportionality, a report by Prof. Anton Buhagiar proposed a reform in which the total number of seats allocated to each party is equivalent to the proportion of votes obtained on a national basis, with the introduction of a national quota.

But the seats would still be allocated based on the STV result in each district. Crucially, the system also allowed the transfer of votes, up to the last possible stage, even between candidates of different parties.

The commission’s final report concluded that Buhagiar’s system “retains the voting method to which the Maltese people have gotten used to while changing in a radical manner the counting method and the method of allocating seats and assigning them to candidates.”

In this sense, a solution to Malta’s electoral quandary has existed since 1994.

But the Commission failed to reach an agreement on whether there should be a national threshold and on how this threshold should be. It also failed to agree on what happens to the votes given to the candidates of parties who fail to get elected to parliament.

The Buhagiar report offered a solution that is readily available and can be implemented without doing away with other fundamentals of the Maltese voting system, but it is still unlikely for both parties to agree to changes which will erode their hegemony especially now that they seem more vulnerable.

And this begs the question as to whether third parties should focus on electoral change at the risk of striking the image of whining outsiders, or strive for success through the present system, maybe even at the risk of sounding delusional.