The upcoming European Parliament elections are once again being contested by a large number of candidates. The two main parties have nominated 22 candidates between them (12 for the Labour party and 10 for the Nationalist Party) to fill five (maybe six) seats in the European Parliament. One does wonder why so many candidates are being fielded.

In a general election the parties may be motivated to nominate candidates who might win a few extra first-preference votes, which would not have otherwise been won by the party.

However, in an election where the constitutional amendment of the majority of first-preference votes is not applicable, nominating more candidates than a party expects to win is not beneficial to those same parties.

Over-nomination may turn out to be detrimental for both the parties and the individual candidates.

The campaign for the Euro elections is at its peak and the parties are promoting their candidates as best they can. MEP hopefuls are taking the centre stage using any channel of communication possible. Unlike in a general election, when candidates' campaigns are concentrated in a particular district, in these elections candidates are being put in the heart of the campaign. This is a similar strategy as that of a general election when parties' campaigns have become more like Presidential campaigns and the focus is on the respective leader and his capabilities.

This strategy is fine as MEP candidates require votes from across the country to secure election. However, the problem is that airtime and any promotional materials are split between 10 or 12 candidates rather than one leader, making it hard for the electorate to get to know who's who. With a shorter list of candidates the parties would have had a better chance of focusing on the candidates' abilities while voters would have been in a better position to get to know the candidates.

If voters are motivated enough to turn up at the polling stations they may opt to take one of two shortcuts. The first shortcut, which some may take, is not to allocate all the preferences to the list presented by their party. In a close election when a few votes could decide a seat, non-transferable votes may affect the final result of this election. A more plausible shortcut is for voters to allocate the top two preferences in a judicial manner and then allocate the remaining preferences to the candidates in the order of appearance on the respective party list.

This shortcut does not affect the parties but may still affect the final outcome of the election of individual candidates.

One of the striking features of the single transferable vote system is the transferability of votes from one candidate to another. The principle behind this system is to make every vote count. In theory, the system works out fine. In practice, however, it is far from perfect and past elections have shown that the system did not work well for individual candidates as a number of them were elected instead of others not on the basis of voters' judicious choice but because of the position their named appeared on the ballot paper.

In Malta, candidates' names appear alphabetically in party groupings and voters normally allocate the number one and number two preference thoughtfully. In the eyes of the electorate lower preferences are not important and so they tend to allocate them randomly. Quite often voters take shortcuts by way of filling the remaining preferences from top to bottom according to their appearance on the ballot paper.

In this scenario, there is a possibility of a candidate or candidates featured in the upper half of a party list being elected instead of others featured lower even though the candidates featured lower may have gained more first-preference votes than top candidates. Had the list of candidates been shorter there would have been a good possibility that the electorate's intended choices prevail as all preferences might have been allocated sensibly.

The reasons why in this election the main parties are nominating so many candidates is yet to be understood. The long lists of candidates are not going to increase the parties' chances of winning more seats and will merely serve to prolong the counting process at the counting hall. At that stage of the election no shortcuts could be taken.

The author is carrying out doctoral research on the Maltese electoral system and its consequences on Maltese politics.