First-time election contender Claudette Buttigieg was running neck and neck with her Labour rival Edward Scicluna to clinch the last seat on the Birkirkara district.

She failed to make it on her own steam to Parliament by a mere eight votes, giving the Labour Party three seats against the Nationalist Party’s two on the eighth district.

But way back on the first count, a packet of 50 votes went missing from Ms Buttigieg’s pigeonhole. The packet was wrongly attributed to PN candidate Michael Axiak’s pigeon hole, which – since they are arranged in alphabetical order – was next to Ms Buttigieg’s.

This mistake early in the sorting process meant Ms Buttigieg’s voting tally was constantly 50 votes short, denying her, at the last count, the parliamentary seat that was rightfully hers.

She was eventually elected as part of the constitutional mechanism that awards political parties extra seats to ensure proportionality between votes and seats. The mistake was only discovered when Dr Axiak was eliminated on the 13th count and his votes were distributed to the other candidates. Ms Buttigieg was the only PN candidate in the race by then.

However, the 50 votes with a number one next to her name from Dr Axiak’s transfers could not be added to her tally at that stage and became non-transferable. Party officials realised something was wrong but the Electoral Commission, despite admitting the mistake, insisted it could not interfere with counts that had already been closed. The candidate was left with no option but to go to court.

Had the blunder not occurred, the difference in Parliament between both parties would have been of seven seats, not nine.

In February last year, the Civil Court in its constitutional jurisdiction ruled in Ms Buttigieg’s and the PN’s favour. However, Madam Justice Jacqueline Padovani Grima did not strike off the seat won by the Labour Party on the eighth district. Instead, she opted for what she described as the “least noxious and disruptive” remedy by awarding the PN two additional seats to re-establish the seven-seat difference.