The full line-up of Malta’s six MEPs who will be chosen in next Saturday’s election may take up to Monday night to be complete, according to the Electoral Commission.
In a briefing held yesterday at the Naxxar counting hall, Louis Fsadni, the commission’s officer in charge of the counting process, said the official result of the first count was expected between 1 and 2am on Monday.
However, political parties would have a clear indication much earlier; probably a couple of hours after the sorting starts.
Mr Fsadni said the process could be delayed if a number of candidates exceeded the expected quota of 35,000 votes and got elected on the first count.
He said the allocation of the surplus votes was a rather time-consuming exercise. As a matter of fact the commission will keep its staff on call until Tuesday at noon.
Chief electoral commissioner Joseph Church said the sorting process could not start before Sunday at noon, as this was dictated by European Parliament election rules and had to be observed across all member states.
Nevertheless, the commission will be taking measures to speed up the opening of the ballot boxes.
As a result the boxes used for early voting, and those in residential homes where voting took place last Saturday, will be opened as soon as voting closes at 10pm on Saturday. This process involves grouping the voting documents, which are placed face down in stacks of 50.
The counting process will be spread on 13 different tables which represent the respective electoral districts, but in random order.
The official result of the first count was expected between 1am and 2am on Monday
The commission said that to speed up the process, ballots from one table may be transferred to another, so the final count on each table would not necessarily reflect the votes cast in that particular district.
Until Tuesday evening there were still 24,719 uncollected voting documents, which may be picked up until midnight today from the commission’s offices.
There are 336,494 registered Maltese voters and an additional 7,880 European voters.
On polling day the commission will have 782 counting staff and 3,662 assistant commissioners seeing to the 680 ballot boxes.
The counting of the votes for the elections of the administrative committees in five hamlets, which will coincide with those of the European Parliament, will be held on Saturday, May 31.