Malta: Nationalist Party files fresh court application against Electoral Commission | Malta Today

The PN and two candidates Claudette Buttigieg and Frederick Azzopardi have filed a Constitutional court application against the Electoral Commission, over the 9 March election result which the PN insists “did not reflect the will of the people,” and distorted proportionality in Parliament. In its application the PN, Buttigieg and Azzopardi  are asking the Constitutional court to declare the Electoral Commission’s actions in breach of the right to free elections which uphold the will of the people and consequently address the injustice suffered by the party and the two candidates by correcting the number of MPs elected to reflect proportionality.

Malta: Court rejects vote recount requests | Times of Malta

The Constitutional Court has turned down requests by two Nationalist candidates to recount the votes in the eighth and 13th districts, saying there was no juridical need to do so. Candidates were not going to suffer any “prejudice” because they were still going to get elected, the court ruled. Under the Constitution, four seats must be credited to the Nationalist Party to achieve representation in Parliament proportional to its number one votes. One of them is going to be assigned to Fredrick Azzopardi, a candidate for Gozo, and another to Claudette Buttigieg Pace, who contested in Birkirkara.

Malta: Should prisoners in Malta be allowed election vote? | The Times of Malta

As the voting documents are being distributed, one part of Maltese society will not be expecting any deliveries. Based on the UK tradition, Malta bars people serving a prison term longer than one year from voting. Those given a suspended sentence retain the right. The matter was a controversial battlefield in the UK in 2001 when convicted killer John Hirst challenged the blanket ban on prisoners voting. He lost the case in the English High Court but subsequently won it in the European Court of Human Rights. None of the main political parties was happy about the ruling; the last British Labour government put off doing anything in response. In March 2011, the UK Government set up a Commission to look into the possibility of drafting a Bill of Rights and providing advice on reforming the European Court of Human Rights. In Malta, no such debate is taking place but according to criminal lawyer Joe Giglio, the fact that a person has committed an offence should not have much to do with his right to vote.

Malta: Greens want voting rights extended to 16-year-olds | maltatoday.com.mt

Alternattiva Demokratika Zaghzagh (ADZ) said it strongly believes that the right to vote in all elections should be extended to all citizens above the age of 16. “While both PN and PL keep using youth as a backdrop, they should take a clear stand on this basic democratic issue, whether to allow 16 year olds to vote in local, European and general elections,” ADZ said. ADZ spokesperson Robert Callus said: “Different people mature at different ages. There are those who vote according to the favour they have received or on the basis of tradition rather than according to the needs of the country or ideology. What can be more immature than that? Yet, these people have the right to vote, and rightly so.”