The Labour Party is expected to accept the Nationalist Party’s latest proposal of having each ballot manually inspected before it is electronically scanned to determine the voter’s preferences.

Sources close to the Electoral Commission told Times of Malta that the “hybrid system” had been proposed by the PN to resolve the serious issues in the electronic counting system.

Last December, the PN had denounced the electronic voting system as flawed, following a number of mock tests. According to the party, the system had been tampered with, without the electoral commission’s knowing.

Moreover, certain marks on the ballot sheet were not detected, thus fuelling concerns of corrupt practices. The PN had sounded alarm bells that the system could be abused so voters would be able to identify themselves, and hence open up the possibility of vote buying.

To resolve this, the PN proposed a system that would manually check each ballot to ensure that there was no visible mark which could make the voter identifiable. While this is happening, party agents will be taking their samples as is done in every election.

The parties will take samples and extrapolate the readings to calculate a result.

Originally, the Labour Party had opposed this idea because this meant the result of the sampling would be known at 2am or 3am so the parties agreed to postpone the process to 7am the day after election day.

Sources close to the Electoral Commission said this agreement so late in day meant that the commission will now have to work around the clock to ensure that people are recruited to carry out the manual checking.