I would like to make a few reflections on the electoral process before the whole subject is put in cold storage.

First, is it necessary for the parties to subject the people to such a heavy dose of politics on a daily basis? One reason for this is that both parties have their own radio and television station. Once both parties have their own stations, are the weekly mass meetings before the election necessary?

I hope that by the time of the next election we would have settled once and for all the business about who is entitled to vote. Living abroad for six months does not mean one is unaware of, or is not interested in, what is happening in one's home country.

I have asked a Spanish friend of mine who is married in Malta and has lived here for the last 25 years or so. This is what he has told me: "A Spanish citizen has a right to vote in his country's elections even if he lives abroad, no matter for how long. He receives the vote at home and he sends it by post, normally to the Spanish embassy in his country (in our case in Rome). Periodically, the person living abroad receives from the registrar in Madrid a form to fill in confirming his address or to inform him of any change".

The same applies, more or less, to citizens of the United Kingdom. "If you live overseas but had been residing at a UK address, it is possible to vote in parliamentary elections for a period of 15 years. To vote you can either return to the UK or arrange for a postal or proxy vote by contacting the local authority where you lived in the UK. Regarding voting while on holiday etc., this is possible by arranging to cast a postal vote, but you must give at least six days' notice".

So, the matter is very straight and simple: if you are a citizen, you are entitled to vote. While on this subject, I hope too that the two parties will stop applying for court injunction to stop certain people from voting on grounds of incapacity etc. They should let things take their natural course and stop appearing as if they are harassing people.

We should do away with the laborious procedure of physically distributing voting documents to households. These should be given to voters at polling booths against the presentation of their ID or, alternatively, they can well be sent to households by post. In any case, voters would have to present their ID when voting.

I cannot but praise the serious way the Electoral Commission is handling elections. Perhaps it is time to see whether it is necessary to keep polling booths open till 10 p.m. Maybe the time has also come to consider an electronic system of vote counting.

In the same way the whole electoral process is under the scrutiny of all the parties, the electronic equipment used could be in constant custody of all parties for the sake of transparency and general trust. This is worth considering. Parties may also consider if it is of any value to call on voters, by phone or other means, to "remind" them to vote.

During the last election campaign, we had a lot of talk on the 1987 and 1996 amendments to the electoral provisions. These helped in no small way to ensure proper representation so that the party with the most votes will be given the right to govern.

However, the amendments left two important situations open.

1) Subject that only two parties manage to elect candidates, the party with the greatest number of votes will govern. But let us suppose AD obtains 10,000 votes, without winning any seats. Should the wishes of these be ignored, especially in an electoral system based on the single transferable vote?

2) Should three parties manage to elect candidates, every party ends up with the seats obtained, enabling a situation where party A may get a minority of first count votes but a majority of seats, while party B finds itself in opposition, and party C may just manage to get one seat. This may also be an incentive to someone to manipulate the electoral boundaries.

I suggest the following system which may address both issues.

1) The voting process will involve two ballot papers, one of which will be as the one we have at present. Let us call it ballot A, with voters showing their preferences as we do now. The other will be a simple one with the names of all the parties (ballot B). Every voter will give his preferences on the latter paper. Should a party obtain less than a threshold of, say, seven per cent first preference votes it is eliminated from the race and its preferences will fall on the other parties. At this stage, we have the vote share of all parties obtaining more than seven per cent. If only two parties do so, the one obtaining most resulting votes wins the election.

2) A count will then be held of the other ballot papers (ballot A), the same as we do now, to elect the candidates. It is a technical matter of how to ensure that, through trigger mechanisms as we already have, all parties (obtaining over seven per cent in ballot B) will have exactly the representation in parliament corresponding to the share of votes in ballot B. In the very unlikely event that an independent candidate manages to get a quota and is elected, s/he gets a seat in parliament, but without voting powers (not having obtained the required seven per cent of the national popular vote).

So, in fact, the second ballot (ballot B) will constitute the real election to determine which party has won the election. This system will address the issues raised earlier. Besides, it has other advantages.

The result may be known within a few hours. If we are bold enough, the counting of ballot papers B may even be held on site, as with most countries, under the scrutiny of an Electoral Commission representative and a representative from each party in the presence of the public.

A second advantage would be that voters will not be inhibited from voting to a smaller party, say, AD. They will be assured that if AD does not obtain the required number of votes to be represented, their vote will not be wasted but be transferred.

As to casual elections, I always thought that the present system under which all candidates start from zero is rather unfair. Thus, an unelected candidate finishing with a few hundred votes short of the quota is given no credit for them and starts the casual election on the same starting point as one who obtained much fewer votes, say 200. Since the names in the ballot paper appear in alphabetical order, the candidates whose name start with the letter A or B etc., are usually elected. A look at the last 2003 casual elections proves this point. I feel the system should be reviewed.

Now we come to the celebrations after the election. Of course, spontaneous celebrations are part of the game but there is a limit. Once I happened to be in Paris when the country elected a new President of the Republic. They had grand celebrations at the Champs Elysee, going into the small hours of the night.

But I failed to see hooting cars being driven like mad through all the streets for a day or two, as we have here. How about the winning supporters congregating at the Granaries, or in front of their party's headquarters, and leaving the rest of us in relative peace.

Finally, I suggest the setting up of a permanent forum between the parties in which their representatives meet regularly to agree on certain matters. Such forum could be used for the parties to adopt a common front over certain important issues, such as hunting, unlawful summer residences and students' stipends.