17% of voting documents uncollected

A staggering amount of eligible voters for tomorrow's local councils elections have not collected their voting documents, as a total of 33,000 votes remained unclaimed.

Voters had until Thursday midnight to collect their voting document.

This amount is almost five times more than those that remained uncollected during the 2007 local elections when 7,000 votes were not collected. A significant participation rate was seen in the fifth round of 2008, when the elections in several localities coincided with the general elections.

In fact, while the participation rate for 2007 had been 68% that in 2008 reached the 86%.

Over 21,000 of the 192,000 eligible voters are EU citizens residing in Malta. According to the Electoral Commission, between 16,000 and 17,000 of the uncollected votes belong to these foreigners.

Tomorrow, 34 scheduled localities and the Sliema local council - to take part this year and next year after the Department of Local Government dissolved the council - will go to the polls.

The 159,000 who collected their voting document will be choosing from 10 Alternattiva Demokratika candidates, 11 independent candidates, 198 Nationalist candidates and 200 Labour candidates.

Polling stations will open tomorrow morning at around 7am and close sharp at 7pm. The ballot boxes in Malta will be taken straight to the counting hall in Naxxar while those in Gozo will be taken to the sports complex in Rabat, Gozo. Voting will start immediately as the first results are expected to come out during the night.

All counting will be finalised on Sunday.

Key facts

Statistics show that 17 councils currently have a Labour majority, while another 17 own a PN majority.

Floriana is the only council with no overall majority.

The addition of the Sliema council means that Labour wills tart with a 50% majority against the PN's 47%. Had Sliema not been included, the PL would have started with a 53% majority against the PN's 46%.