First-time voters have always made up a significant chunk of the electorate and on March 9 there will be some 19,000 of them.
The revised electoral register, including the names of those who recently turned 18, will be out five days after the election writ is published
Chief Electoral Commissioner Saviour Gauci yesterday said that 2,000 of these new voters will be able to vote as a result of the legal changes made last year that introduced the concept of a rolling electoral register.
This means that those who turned 18 between October, when the last electoral register was published, and March 8 will still be able to vote.
In previous years a number of 18-year-olds whose name would not have appeared on the last electoral register were denied the right to vote, an issue that came to the fore during the divorce referendum in 2011.
Mr Gauci said that a revised electoral register, including the names of those who recently turned 18, will be out five days after the election writ is published in the Government Gazette.
The writ is expected to be signed by President George Abela tomorrow when he dissolves Parliament, sets the election date and orders the Electoral Commission to get the election process going.
The electoral register will be the basis on which voting documents are issued.
Mr Gauci said there were some 19,000 people who were eligible to vote for the first time in the coming election. This amounts to almost six per cent of eligible voters and a force to be reckoned with by the political parties.
According to the October register there are 331,135 eligible voters split between 13 districts.
This amount will increase by a further 2,000 18-year-olds, less those who would have died.
Election districts were partially redrawn in April last year to satisfy the constitutional requirement that each will have an average of 25,000 registered voters.
The changes mainly affected Marsa and Naxxar with these localities being split between two districts.
Gozo, which is exempt from the constitutional requirement so that it remains a single district, had almost 28,000 registered voters up until October.
Each of the districts elects five MPs and the party winning an absolute or relative majority of votes is guaranteed an absolute majority of seats.
In the case of a party receiving a relative majority of votes, however, it is only guaranteed an absolute majority of seats if two parties are elected to Parliament.
ksansone@timesofmalta.com