We are now just under six months away from another set of elections, with the elections for the European Parliament and local councils coming up in June 2024.
As things stand, it appears that it will be another election where the only way that Maltese people who live abroad can vote is by having to fly into Malta to physically vote in the voting booths.
Malta is one of just four countries in the European Union (together with Ireland, Czechia and Slovakia) to not have any form of facility for its nationals to be able to vote abroad.
Indeed the only facility made available for voters is usually an Air Malta flight ticket subsidised down to €90 – but this is not a small cost for the voter, and it’s an even more prohibitive cost for the government itself.
When it came to the last MEP elections in 2019, a total of €815,000 was spent to fly 525 voters along with 270 of their dependents to Malta to vote. This effectively works out to €1,012.42 being spent on every person who took 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.
Much has changed since then: for starters Air Malta won’t even exist in its current format by the time the MEP elections comes around, and its replacement told the Times of Malta that it had not been approached to provide subsidised flights to voters.
Certainly those Maltese nationals who live and work abroad have a right to vote in Maltese elections just as much as those living here – and this is a concept widely accepted in the civilised, democratic world.
But it would be of benefit to both the government and to the voters themselves if a system where those abroad can vote abroad – probably through their respective embassies where possible – is to be introduced.
This was something which Joseph Muscat’s Labour Party promised in 2013, and promised to look into again in 2017 – but it never materialised.
Robert Abela’s Labour Party manifesto in 2022 promised a public consultation on electoral reforms and a process to allow voting using ID cards rather than voting documents, but no mention of facilitating voting for Maltese nationals living abroad.
The Nationalist Party’s 2022 general election manifesto meanwhile included ideas to allow online voting for MEP elections, local councils, and referenda – though it was not clear from the manifesto whether this would cater for voters living overseas.
It seems there isn’t the political will anymore to make voting easier for those who are living abroad. Maybe there is an intrinsic fear in both parties of the unknown quantity that a foreign voter could present in an election, and the impact that could have on the final result.
After all, every vote counts: but every person’s right to have the most reasonable way of actually voting counts even more.