The Malta Independent on Sunday
More cases of people with double voting documents, ID cards
COLLAPSE OF THE ID CARD SYSTEM ● Man given someone else’s ID number as well as his, can vote twice
The double and triple ID Card saga revealed in detail by The Malta Independent on Sunday last week has taken a new twist, as more sources have come forward with fresh information sustaining the claims made in Parliament by PN Deputy Leader Beppe Fenech Adami who described the ID card system managed by Identity Malta as being “in total free-fall”.
New documents obtained by this newspaper show how the ‘collapse’ of the ID card system has serious repercussions on the electoral registry, with people set to obtain more than one voting document.
In the documents we are publishing today, this newspaper can reveal that a man residing in Sliema, who until October 2012 held the ID card number: **902A (** digits withheld to protect pri
vacy) is no longer found on the electoral registry as of October 2014. Here starts the interesting yet mind-boggling part. A man from Swieqi, registered in the electoral registry with ID card number **920A, in October 2016 found himself with two ID cards: **920A and **902A, the latter previously held by the man from Sliema who disappeared from the registry in 2014.
It will be noted that the two ID cards currently held by the man from Swieqi are very similar, with the last two digits switched, but this goes to show the seriousness of the crisis at Identity Malta. That a person should not have more than one ID card (and voting document) is a given, but how a person gets someone else’s ID card number while retaining his own beggars belief.
The documents being published today give an indication of how serious the ID card ‘collapse’ is, but unfortunately it doesn’t give us an indication of just how big the problem is. Experts who spoke to this newsroom following last Sunday’s revelations said: “It is practically impossible for Identity Malta to establish the extent of the problem and resolve it in time for the general election.”
Following the Prime Minister’s statement last Monday, The Malta Independent on Sunday is today publishing the leaked documents from the internal exercise conducted by Identity Malta itself in its attempt to establish how many people have more than one ID card (see page 6).
From a sample of 300 people, it was found that 80 have more than one ID card, 26.6 per cent of the sample.
From laborious investigations carried out by this newsroom without the tools possessed by Identity Malta at their disposal, it also transpires that a woman from Marsascala who has two ID cards has already featured on the electoral register and, if nothing is done, she will be able to vote twice in the next general election. The woman has one ID card number ending with the letter ‘P’, which is a provisional card, and another one ending with an ‘L’, which is the regular letter confirming a person residing in Malta. This particular person is registered as living in the same apartment in Marsascala. The first ID card is registered in her maiden name while the second is in her married surname. People holding a provisional (‘P’) ID card are issued with voting documents just like those with ID cards ending with an ‘A’, ‘M’ or ‘L’.
It is reasonable to expect that the ID card system at Identity Malta would have checks and balances to, firstly delete a provisional ID card issued to a person and, secondly, that it would delete an ID card once a person registers for a new one. But this did not happen and one wonders just how many cases like this are out there and to what extent is the Electoral Commission aware of the problem.
In the meantime, the Electoral Commission has not asked for clarification from Identity Malta following the revelation by this newspaper last Sunday.
For their part, both Prime Minis- ter Joseph Muscat and Justice and Culture Minister Owen Bonnici have denied there is any crisis at Identity Malta, saying that “all is smooth” at the agency.
Minister Bonnici even reached out to this newsroom, offering a tour of Identity Malta. And yet, no one has denied the existence of 80 people out of a sample of 300 who possess more than one ID card.
Following today’s publication of documents, Identity Malta needs to further explain what it is doing to determine how many more cases of double and triple ID cards exist and the identity of the bearers of these double voting documents.