Uncollected votes: how does the spring hunting referendum compare?

With six days to go until the holding of a historic abrogative referendum to abolish spring hunting, 31,647 voting documents remain uncollected, equating to 9% of the electorate. 

However, the high number of uncollected votes also includes those of eligible Maltese voters living abroad. And electors still have a few days more during which they can collect their voting paper.

For the referendum’s result to be valid, voter turnout must surpass the 50% mark, which it has done in all of Malta’s four previous national referenda. 

The latest statistics from the Electoral Commission also show that around 15,477 people have personally collected their votes from the police after they were not delivered to their residences. 

How does the coming referendum’s vote take-up figures compare with the ones that came before it?

Despite the heavy political and social undertones of the most recent referendum – the divorce referendum of 2011 – 20,700 voting documents remained uncollected by voting day, equating to 6% of the eligible voters. 

Moreover, a further 71,711 voting documents were collected or delivered but not cast, while 2,173 votes were deemed invalid.

In total, almost three-quarters (72%) of the voting population turned out to vote that day, with divorce passing the hurdle by 53% of the total vote. The six-point margin of victory made the divorce result the closest in Malta’s history. 

Voter apathy was certainly not a feature of the first Maltese referendum of the millennium – the EU membership referendum of 2003. Only 4,200 voting documents remained uncollected on voting day, a mere 1.41% of the eligible voters.

A further 23,031 voting documents were collected or delivered but not cast, while 3,911 votes were deemed invalid. The 91% voter turnout was both the highest turnout in Malta’s referendum history, as well as the most engaging referendum out of the nine countries that voted on EU membership that year.

In the end, EU membership passed with around 54% of the total vote.

Malta may be witnessing something of a referendum glut, but one would have to go back to 1973 for the next most-recent referendum, a local referendum among Gozitans to decide whether to abolish the Gozo Civic Council, back then a Gozitan civic local government.

A boycott ordered by the Gozo Civic Council resulted in an exceptionally low voter turnout of just 195 people – fewer than 2% of the total Gozitan population. Nevertheless, 77% of the valid votes cast were in favour of the Council’s abolition and Gozitan administration became centralised in Valletta.

The 2-4 May 1964 referendum has gone down in history as the day Malta voted for independence. Yet, independence was a choice that 20% of the electorate was seemingly apathetic to. 5,899 voting documents remained uncollected, while 27,195 were delivered or received but not cast. Moreover, a whopping 9,016 votes (5.5%) were deemed invalid, the highest percentage of invalid votes in Malta’s referendum history.

Malta’s first open national referendum, the 1956 United Kingdom Integration referendum, was also the one that witnessed the lowest electoral turnout. Spurred on by a boycott by the Nationalist Opposition, 3,287 voting documents remained uncollected, while a further 59,153 votes were delivered or received but not used.

In the end, 59% of the electorate cast their votes, with 2,559 of the votes cast being deemed invalid. Although 77% of the valid votes were in favour of integration, the high boycott level meant that only 44% of the population voted for integration, and it was not implemented.