Abstention election: uncollected voting documents almost double, highest share in 10th, 12th districts

The number of voters who have already abstained from Saturday’s election by refusing to pick up their voting document has almost doubled from the 2017 election.

By Thursday midnight when the deadline to pick up the voting document expired, 14,473 remained uncollected. This equates to 4.1% of eligible voters.

In 2017, 8,372 voting documents remained uncollected, equating to 2.4% of eligible voters back then.

People cannot vote on Saturday unless they have a voting document issued by the Electoral Commission.

Figures obtained from political party representatives show that the 12th District had the highest share of uncollected voting documents at 9% of eligible voters. In this district, 2,529 voters did not collect their voting document.

The 12th District includes St Paul’s Bay, where turnouts have traditionally been low in every type of election.

The second highest share of uncollected votes is in the 10th District, comprising Sliema, St Julians and Pembroke, among others. On this district, 1,876 voting documents remained uncollected, equal to 7% of eligible voters.

In the 9th and 13th districts, the share of uncollected documents stood at 5% of the electorate in each district.

The lowest share of uncollected voting documents was in the 6th and 7th districts, where just 2% of eligible voters in each failed to pick up their document to be able to vote on Saturday.

The numbers suggest that voter apathy will be higher than it was five years ago. MaltaToday’s rolling survey has been projecting the number of valid votes cast at 87%, which would equate to an expected turnout of around 88%.