By the time the newspapers hit the shelves this morning, voting across Malta for the local council elections and the Spring hunting referendum will have started.
The intention of this leading article is not to analyse the possible outcomes. The intention is to highlight the fact that our voting system needs a serious overhaul. First of all, we have our Day of Reflection law. Newsrooms across Malta were left scratching their heads yesterday to come up with stories that are informative and newsy after months of campaigning. The law prevents all media from broadcasting anything political or related to the referendum subject matter on the Friday (yesterday). Given that this is a print medium, it loses two days of reporting subject matter. This is said in the context of social media today with platforms such as Twitter and Facebook going into overdrive despite the law. It really is outdated and archaic and ought to be scrapped. To coin our usual favourite phrase, it is – in today’s world – about as useful as a chocolate teapot.
The second issue which needs addressing is Malta’s system where people who live abroad are flown back to the country to cast their vote through subsidised Air Malta flights. Surely, in the year 2015, in a country where everyone is plugged in and constantly hooked into the electronic grid, we can find a way to organise secure electronic voting from outside the country. Other countries have had it for years. If we are not that clued up on how to do it, then surely people can personally cast their ballot preferences at our embassies, or even through the post.
As things stand, the government pays Air Malta the difference in costs to bring people over to vote in whatever poll may be held. It also turns out, that for years on end, people also end up missing the opportunity to pick up their voting documents as the flights specifically stipulate that they can still come here on the last day to vote in the poll, but no one checks whether or not their voting documents have been picked up. So that actually turns out to be a cheap weekend break for some and deceit for others who book the flights without knowing that will not be able to pick up their documents.
And now, onto the final point – electronic voting in Malta with a real-time exit poll. While it is obviously clear that votes still need to be physically sorted, counted and verified, we need an electronic system which would give us the results within a very short time and with a tiny margin of error.
We still make a big deal about closing shops which are near polling areas and counting agents from the political parties monitoring this, that and the other. Politics is Malta’s national pastime, granted, but it is time to move on. The country would be spared the tension and the dramas of voting on a Saturday and waiting for the parties to deliver us with the news of who has won through their secret sample formula. If we had electronic voting, it would all be over by the end of voting. But perhaps this is exactly the system that the political parties wish to preserve.