Rival reports on electoral district boundaries issued

The members of the Electoral Commission nominated by the government and the opposition have clashed on the re-drawing of electoral boundaries and produced separate reports, which were tabled in Parliament this evening. Although Malta has strict proportionality between votes cast in general elections and representation in parliament when two political parties are successful at a general election, the boundaries come into play in determining the result should a third party successfully elect a candidate. In that case, adjustments for proportionality (by adding more MPs) are not made, and MPs are elected only according to each district. Five MPs are elected from each district. Malta has 12 electoral districts while the 13th is Gozo. In terms of the constitution the number of eligible voters in Malta’s 12 districts needs to be as near as possible to 25,938, with a deviation of five per cent allowed. There are no such limitations for Gozo, whose boundaries cannot be altered. The Electoral Commission observed that since the last revision of the boundaries in 2012, the population numbers had fluctuated by more than the allowed 5% in most of the districts. In a majority report (the...