€815,000 spent on 525 voters and their dependents to fly to Malta to vote in MEP elections

A total of €815,000 was spent to fly 525 voters – along with 270 of their dependents – to Malta to vote in last May’s European Parliament elections.

The figures emerge from a report issued by the Electoral Commission, delving into the logistics and expenses related to the MEP elections, which cost the country just over €7 million.

On 29 April, it was announced that flights would be offered by Air Malta at a subsidised price of €90 so that eligible voters could fly to Malta.

A total of 525 voters and 270 of their dependents made use of the incentive. The report indicates that the total expense for Air Malta’s service was €815,000.

This effectively works out to

€1,012.42 spent on every person who bought one of these subsidised tickets, and €1,552.38 per person when only considering those 525 who voted, which was in reality the idea behind these subsidised flights.

The report reads that 43 per cent of these people flew in from London, 29 per cent from Brussels, and the remaining 28 per cent from several other cities where

Air Malta operates.

Malta is one of the few countries where voters living overseas do not have the facility to vote at embassies, meaning that their only choice to exercise their democratic right to vote is to fly to Malta, either through the subsidised flights or through any other flight.

This is in spite of the fact that the Labour Party had promised, in both its 2013 and 2017 electoral manifestos, that a system will be put in place where Maltese can vote within Maltese embassies.

The report also delves into the total cost of the elections, finding that the MEP elections cost €7 million, with some of the elements which make up that figure being common to both these elections and those of the local councils, which ran across the same weekend.

The biggest expense, which is in fact one of those elements, was the electronic counting system, used for the first time in Malta, which cost just over €2 million, while the remuneration for temporary personnel also cost €1.7 million. Transport, meanwhile, cost just under €440,000, while remuneration for assistant electoral commissioners cost a total of €1.3 million.

The report notes that the response to the new electronic counting system was a positive one, with a postmortem seminar taking place on 10

July to gather feedback from all stakeholders on the system and the general procedure that was used during the election.

The electoral commission made a recommendation with regard to the voting documents, which have to be printed, stamped and sent to all voters for them to be allowed to vote.

They said that this requires a long process with a lot of human resources, and noted that there is space for this process to be improved and made more efficient and less time consuming without compromising the integrity of the electoral process.

Indeed, the report reads that the electoral commission has already begun discussing potential changes which would reduce the “enormous” effort required and see that the voters are given a better service.