By law, Malta’s Electoral Commission is an autonomous body. In practice, its members include the sister of a sitting Minister, party activists, and former party presidents – appointed through a process jointly controlled by the two parties it is meant to supervise.

Smaller parties and election observers have criticised the system as exclusionary and lacking true independence.

“The Electoral Commission privileges the two [main] parties,” ADPD Chairperson Sandra Gauci told Amphora Media.

“Unfortunately, the bigger developers dominate the parties. (…) So if you just have an organism like an Electoral Commission, which is just made up of the two parties, there is obviously a big deficiency, right?”Momentum party’s chairperson, Arnold Cassola, explained.

In response to Amphora Media’s questions, the Electoral Commission replied that it is “established in accordance with the Constitution of the Republic of Malta” and “operates in accordance with the Laws of Malta as enacted by Parliament”. In other words, the situation is calcified by legislation.

The Electoral Commission counts votes, publishes election results and campaign expenses, reviews electoral division boundaries, and can initiate suspending an election if it alleges illegal or corrupt practices. The documents in its possession are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

Amphora Media analysed the Electoral Commission’s performance over time and its key controversies, speaking to representatives of Malta’s smaller parties to map out the gaps in the country’s democratic process.

“The Partit Nazzjonalista is always open for discussion to enhance our electoral system. This discussion should not be limited to political parties but to wider society in general,” PN’s representative wrote in response.

PN-PL Loyalists Dominate The Electoral Commission

Members of the Electoral Commission are appointed for three years by the President on the advice of the Prime Minister, who consults with the Leader of the Opposition.

Under Malta’s decades-long political duopoly, this effectively means that only the dominant parties can significantly influence the institution’s make-up.

The appointments include Veronique Dalli, the sister ofEnergy Minister Miriam Dalli, and a former legal co-contractor of MP Edward Zammit Lewis. Both Miriam Dalli (Districts 5 and 11) and Zammit Lewis (Districts 8 and 9) contested the 2022 general election.

The current members of the Electoral Commission are:

The Electoral Commission itself does not publish its members’ partisan affiliations.

“The criteria generally used [for the nomination] are to ensure there are individuals with experience in the electoral process and knowledge of electoral law,” PN’s representative commented on the party’s nomination process.

Gauci of ADPD recounts how her party tried to take the Electoral Commission to the Constitutional Court in 2022 over bias towards large parties.

“We’ve lost, we’ve appealed, and we’ve lost again. And to be honest, the reasons given were very – how can I say it – flaky, little to do with what we proposed and what we put forward in front of the magistrate. It’s a system which favours the duopoly, all of it,” she told Amphora Media. The Constitutional Court dismissed the appeal, affirming that constitutional articles are equal and cannot conflict with each other.

International observers noted that Electoral Commission members and delegates are limited to parliamentary parties. 

“The limiting of EC members and delegates to representatives of the parliamentary parties further engrains two-party dominance and excludes smaller parties from the electoral institutions,” OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) said in a report on the 2022 general election.

Drawing and redrawing boundaries: Over 24,000 relocations in districts in 2025

Electoral boundaries are redefined to reflect shifts in population. In 2025, around 24000 voters were relocated, following a proposal by the Electoral Commission that was passed by Parliament (with 41 government MPs in support and 31 opposition MPs opposing the change).

*Gozo and Comino must be treated as a single district and may not be divided irrespective of population size.

The now-approved proposal drew criticism from PN MPs, who claimed that revisions are splitting traditional party strongholds, which could weaken the opposition.

The Opposition did table a counter proposal, written and signed by five electoral commissioners: Melanie Azzopardi, Ian Micallef, Marion Portelli, Victor Scerri, and Angelito Sciberras. 

In it, they criticised many of the proposed changes – and warned against changes to the electoral boundaries that were “superficial and arbitrary”.

“The revision needs to be serious, transparent, and respectful of the importance of the locality cohesion,” the document reads.

“For the Labour Government, the revision of electoral districts is nothing more than a mathematical exercise to reach the required numbers to form a district. […] The spirit of the proposals always put forward by the Partit Nazzjonalista was that there should be as little splitting as possible,” PN’s representative told Amphora Media.

“The Electoral Commission is five against four, so the party in government will decide the boundaries as it suits itself; they make these enormous somersaults just to suit the governing party,” Cassola explained.

Gauci of ADPD said that the district setup is limiting for small parties. It also encourages privileging one’s own district in various domains of power:

“Hiring, direct orders, even skipping the queue when it comes to going to Mater Dei – they manage to privilege these people through being a little bit too cosy with certain ministers. (…) That is something which helps certain people have more privileges than others.”

“We’re living in a society in which the common good isn’t so important. So in a way, you have to bend to appease these people,” she told Amphora Media.

Voter registration and vote counting

Vote counting should be the most straightforward process. For the 2022 general election, the Electoral Commission’s total budget was €6,634,850 – of that, €116,253 was spent on the electronic counting project. 

However, voting eligibility and counting methodologies have not been without controversy either.

Recent controversy concerns voter registrations linked to social housing in  Siggiewi during Roderick Galdes’ tenure as housing minister. In 2024, a series of cases, initiated by the PN and represented by Michael Piccinino, resulted in rulings that several voters had been incorrectly registered at addresses where they did not ordinarily reside.

During this time, Galdes promised upgrades to social housing estates for 500 families. Siggiewi is in the district where Galdes was elected.

The court ordered that corrections be made to register the voters at their ordinary residence. However, the police are yet to take any criminal action.

“The Nationalist Party has won all the appeals, 99 in total, regarding the electoral fraud organised by the Ministry of Roderick Galdes,” PN politician Michael Piccinino, who initiated these cases, wrote on Facebook in reaction.

“Overall, it’s also exposed the Labour Party’s manoeuvring when it comes to trying to take advantage in order to gain electoral gain, even when it’s against the law,” Piccinino commented to Amphora Media. The Labour Party had requested intervention in these cases,  which under Maltese law means a third party, originally not included in the case, can become an extra defendant.

In 2019, the PN alleged that the electronic vote-counting system raised concerns about its reliability, while the Electoral Commission defended its accuracy and integrity. 

“The concerns were raised during the discussions on the introduction of the system. (…) The PN approved the new system only after the necessary changes were made to ensure a fair system,” the PN’s representative explained.

Later, in 2022, PN took the Electoral Commission to court over instances of some prisoners , including those with 10-year or longer sentences, being allowed to vote. The Court rejected the request for lack of jurisdiction, ruling that the law requires such challenges to be made through the Revising Officer before an election to correct the register.

 “We are happy to note that following this court case, the Electoral Commission has taken steps to ensure that cases like this would not be needed in the future,” PN’s representative said.

Vote counting on election days is less than smooth for small parties.

Gauci said that her party had to “fight tooth and nail” to get access to real-time voting counts through the Electoral Commission’s laptops. 

Cassola, too, pointed out that PL and PN members receive voting updates every five minutes, while smaller parties are excluded from the process. When he was running for the European Parliament Elections, he had to learn the interim results from journalists.

This is acknowledged in the ODIHR report on the 2022 elections in Malta. 

“The limited access to the activities of the EC for the public and some contestants, as well as the lack of regulations allowing for citizen and international observation, diminished the transparency of the process,” ODIHR concluded, adding that it had previously issued recommendations on election observation, but they were not adopted.

ODIHR has criticised the lack of transparency in the way this structure makes decisions – minutes and records of decision-making processes, if any, are not published, which is “not in line with international standards”.

Scrutiny of electoral financing

Political parties must submit annual audited accounts to the Electoral Commission and comply with donation and financial disclosure rules.

ODIHR’s recommendations, which included “providing the Electoral Commission with adequate powers and resources to carry out a proactive and efficient supervision, investigation and enforcement of political finance regulations”, have not been implemented.

Momentum party’s founder, Arnold Cassola, says that “PN-PL nominees are supposed to supervise the finances of all parties, but now, for the past seven years, it is a completely abandoned ship.”

He refers to a court case brought by the PN, which argued that the Electoral Commission’s powers to investigate, adjudicate, and fine for breaches violated fair trial rights. The Constitutional Court ruled that the administrative fines were punitive and “criminal” in nature, thus requiring a “court” rather than the Electoral Commission to judge them.

“[The Electoral Commission] is not a fair judge, according to the Constitutional Court. (…) So there’s no control over financing, which is a big joke, because the parties play this game where they have these [donation] marathons, and then in one day they get half a million, and you don’t have to say who gave you the money,” Cassola explained.

In contrast, Cassola recalled how his party treasurer received a call because the Electoral Commission could not find a receipt for a 25-euro donation. 

“I think that was ridiculous, when you have these millions that the PN and especially the Labour Party today are getting from hidden sources, from business people, from developers in particular”.

Gauci of ADPD also feels that the Electoral Commission scrutinises her party more than the larger parties.

“We’re very careful with our accounts. (…) We self-finance our campaign. (…) We don’t accept money from developers because we believe that they are destroying our country,” she said.

“There should be an independent body that supervises elections and that decides who is a party, who is not, and who oversees the finances of the parties, not the Electoral Commission, since it is just made up of two parties,” Cassola argues.

In 2022, Cassola wrote to the Electoral Commission, raising concerns about unequal treatment of smaller parties and independents, calling for equal access to the counting hall, access to information during the count, and improved communication arrangements, including access to facilities such as Wi-Fi. 

He notes that the Electoral Commission addressed the Wi-Fi complaint.