Ballot boxes in Saturday's local council elections will be opened as soon as they reach the Mediterranean Conference Centre counting hall in Valletta in a bid to speed up the counting process, Edward Gatt, Chief Electoral Commissioner, said yesterday.

The same goes for the Victoria Sports Complex where the votes of the Gozitan localities will be counted.

Mr Gatt said the total number of candidates running for the 14th round of local council elections - 282 - signalled an increase in the number of female candidates.

The number of women, in fact, reached 22 per cent of candidates when compared to the 19 per cent contesting in 2003.

In all, there will be 219 ballot boxes in 20 localities in Malta and 14 boxes in the three localities in the sister island.

Mr Gatt said this was the first time voting documents were distributed by Maltapost. The system had been very successful, he said, as 110,880 votes, or 88 per cent, had reached the electorate.

Another 4,092 voting documents were collected from police stations and 14,631 remain uncollected.

Those who have not yet collected their documents can do so from the Electoral Commission in Valletta by midnight today.

In Malta, elections will be held in Mdina, Cospicua, Zabbar, Birkirkara, Fgura, Gudja, Ghaxaq, Kalkara, Lija, Marsascala, Mgarr, Msida, Naxxar, Pietà, Rabat, San Gwann, Sliema, Tarxien, Xghajra and Mtarfa. In Gozo, elections will be held in Victoria, Gharb and Sannat.

The turnout of voters would be known soon after the closure of the polling booths and the results would be broadcast as the counting proceeds. Results will be updated in real time on the Department of Information website.

Louis Fsadni, from the Electoral Commission, explained that the counting staff had been beefed up for Sliema, Zabbar and Birkirkara where the largest number of votes are expected to be cast.