The news this week that Sunday’s will be the last election where manual vote-counting will take place was very welcome indeed. But the voting process as such, it seems, will still remain a manual one, meaning that the country is only moving half a step forward in its electoral process, when it should be going all the way.

With our single-transferrable vote system, deemed to be one of the most complicated on the face of the earth, some help from technology is welcome.

Electronic vote-counting will substantially trim down the time it takes to count votes. The system the Electoral Commission is investing in is expected to produce election results in a matter of a few hours.

The next general election will be the last to witness the all too familiar scenes of political party representatives crowding the counting hall in their hordes, keeping an eye on the vote counting process. And, of course, banging furiously on the Perspex when they see that a ballot sheet being placed in the wrong pile or when they consider a vote to have been dubiously marked on the ballot sheet.

This will, in turn, avoid the repetition of mistakes that took place at the counting hall after the 2013 general election, which saw the PN and PL locked in a fierce court battle that lasted almost four years.

Malta’s electoral system had already taken one pace forward with the introduction of a rolling electoral register, which made those turning 18 years of age the very day before an election eligible to vote.

But this is 2017 and more needs to be done if we are truly to be among the best in Europe.

The next logical step is electronic voting. This would, first and foremost, eliminate the need to employ hundreds, if not thousands of police officers and postal service officials to distribute the voting documents by hand. We would also avoid controversies like the recent one on the ‘defective’ voting documents. People should be able to register at the polling station, using their ID cards, which are equipped with a computerized chip, and vote on a computer screen.

Such a system would also eliminate the laborious and logistically complex process of transporting hundreds of ballot boxes to the counting hall in Naxxar.

Most importantly, it would save the country the trouble of making specific arrangements with the national airline, and forking out huge amounts of money to subsidize the tickets of many who happen to be abroad on Election Day. Such machines could be employed at embassies abroad, completely eliminating the need to travel. Because the equipment is portable it can also be used at the hospitals.

 

Successive governments have boasted about being super digital, and of being among the best in electronic government services, but it seems our electoral process is exempt from all of this. In this day and age, the words ‘pencil and paper’ should not remain part of our polling day vocabulary.