News | Sunday, 03 May 2009

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

EU voters notified two weeks too late

Electoral Commission gives EU citizens in Malta a week to register their vote

Raphael Vassallo
The Electoral Commission this week finally sent official letters to notify the 966 disenfranchised EU citizens that their names had been removed from the European electoral register – two weeks after the publication of the register on 20 April, and only five working days before the 20-day appeals limit expires next Friday.
In a personal (undated) letter to each of the 966 non-Maltese EU citizens who were registered to vote in 2004 – but whose names were omitted from the register in 2009 – Chief Electoral Commissioner Edward R. Gatt explained that they were still in time to appeal for inclusion in the register.
“The deadline for this procedure is Friday 8 May,” Gatt wrote, in a letter received on Saturday 2 May.
But the removal of voters from the European Electoral Register is governed by laws which state clearly that affected voters have be notified of their deletion before the publication of the register.
The relevant law is Article 26.1 of the General Election Act, which specifies that “prior to proceeding to the cancellation of the registration of any voter... the (Electoral) Commission shall by notice in writing require such person to provide such information or such proof or evidence as it may deem necessary to establish such person’s right to remain registered as a voter.”
The European Election Register is admittedly regulated by its own act (Chapter 467): but the above provision still applies:
“The provisions of the General Elections Act relating to... the striking off of names from the Electoral Register shall unless otherwise provided in this Act apply in relation to the European Union Electoral Register.”
Furthermore Article 9.4 of Council Directive 93/109/EC – transposed into Maltese law upon EU accession in 2004 – makes it clear that “community voters who have been entered on the electoral roll shall remain thereon, under the same conditions as voters who are nationals, until such time as they request to be removed or until such time as they are removed automatically because they no longer satisfy the requirements for exercising the right to vote.”
And as established last Sunday by the Electoral Commission’s secretary Mr Joe Calleja, none of these disenfranchised voters had personally requested to be removed from the register.
MaltaToday this week contacted the general secretaries of the two major parties for their reaction, as both parties appoint their own representatives to the Electoral Commission and should therefore have been aware of the situation before it emerged in this newspaper last week.
By the time of going to print, no reply had been received from Jason Micallef on behalf of the Labour Party.
But the Nationalist Party’s Paul Borg Olivier, while arguing that the Electoral Commission had acted within legal parameters, suggested that the information published prior to the final register may have been insufficient.
“It is true that the adverts carried by the Electoral Commission over the past months could have been clearer in respect of those voters who were registered in 2004,” he said yesterday.
“But electors still had the obligation to re-register according to the requirements of Art.11 to 14 of the European Parliament Elections Act.”
Borg Olivier explained that the law provides for a register valid only for a particular election. “Once that election is over, any non-Maltese European citizen has to register to vote in the Europe Parliament election. It is necessary for a European citizen to express the choice to vote in the mother country or in Malta.”

Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below.
Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.

All the interviews from Reporter on MaltaToday's YouTube channel.

EDITORIAL


Reinstate those voters

INTERVIEW