What are casual elections and how do they work?

This morning, the Electoral Commission will begin counting votes to determine which Labour candidates will fill eight parliamentary seats vacated by MPs elected in two districts.

PN candidates vying for seven seats will go through the same process on Tuesday.

These are known as casual elections, a mechanism used to fill parliamentary seats that become vacant after a general election.

They are not by-elections. Voters do not return to the polls.

Instead, the Electoral Commission goes back to ballot papers cast in the general election and carries out a smaller count to determine which unelected candidates should fill the seats given up by double-elected MPs.

Why are casual elections held?

Casual elections are most commonly triggered when a candidate is elected from two districts.

Since an MP can only take up one seat in parliament, they must give up the other. That creates a vacancy in the district they relinquish. The seat is then filled through a casual election.

The count focuses on the parcel of votes credited to the MP who is giving up the seat. Those ballot papers are examined again to determine which eligible candidate is the next usable preference.

In simple terms, the question is not who was the most popular unelected candidate in the district overall. It is: Among the votes that helped elect the MP now giving up the seat, which eligible candidate do those voters appear to prefer next?

The process follows the logic of Malta’s single transferable vote system. Ballots are transferred according to voters’ preferences. Candidates who cannot win may be eliminated. Their votes are then passed on to the next usable preference until a candidate is elected.

The winner fills the vacated seat and becomes an MP for that district.

Why can the result sometimes feel unfair?

One of the quirks of the system was highlighted this week by PN MP Graham Bencini, who said he could be at a disadvantage in the casual election on the 10th district despite receiving around 3,000 votes there.

“I got a substantial number of votes on District 10, around 3,000,” he said in a Facebook post yesterday. “This means I will be at a disadvantage in the casual elections.”

Bencini’s point centres on what happened during the original general election count.

When a candidate is eliminated, their votes are transferred to other candidates according to voters’ next preferences. Some of those votes may eventually help elect another candidate.

If that elected candidate later gives up the seat won, the casual election reopens that elected candidate’s parcel of votes.

Within that parcel, there may be ballot papers that originally belonged to candidates who were eliminated earlier in the count.

Those candidates can then benefit in the casual election because some of the votes they transferred onwards may now return to them, provided they are the highest-ranked eligible candidate on those ballots.

But a candidate who was neither elected nor eliminated does not benefit in the same way.

If a candidate finishes just outside the elected group, their votes remain with them at the end of the original count. They are not transferred onwards to the candidate who was elected and is now giving up the seat.

That means those votes are not part of the parcel reopened in the casual election.

“Because I got too many votes to be eliminated, but not enough to be elected, I will start at a disadvantage,” Bencini said.

“In my case, because I wasn’t eliminated, I didn’t get the chance to pass my votes to those candidates who were elected.”

By contrast, candidates who polled fewer votes than him and were eliminated may have had some of their votes transferred to the MP now giving up the seat. If so, they can start the casual election with an advantage over a candidate who performed better than them in the general election count.

“I find it hard to understand why I should be disadvantaged because I wasn’t eliminated,” Bencini said. “But that’s the situation and that’s the system.”

Why are some people critical of casual elections?

While casual elections are a long-established part of Malta’s electoral system, they weaken the link between voters and the MPs who ultimately end up representing them, according to election analyst David Grech.

Grech, the co-creator of the election analysis website Vot.mt, told Times of Malta the system can be difficult to square with the idea that parliament should reflect voters’ choices as closely as possible.

“Democracy should be about the broadest possible representation,” he said. “Casual elections chip away at that.”

For Grech, the issue is not only that casual elections can produce results that feel unfair to individual candidates.

His broader concern is that they can leave the final composition of parliament dependent on factors voters may not have anticipated when casting their ballot.

These include which district a double-elected MP gives up, which candidates submit nominations for casual elections, how vote parcels were formed during the original count and how parties manage the process internally.

Grech argues that casual elections give political parties too much influence over who eventually enters parliament. That is particularly true when candidates are elected in two districts because the decision about which seat an MP gives up – which is decided by the party – determines which unelected candidates are best placed to enter parliament.

However, while PN MPs elected in two districts are obliged to give up the seat in the district where they got the least votes, the decision for Labour MPs is taken by the party executive.

He is also critical of situations where parties encourage some candidates to submit a nomination for a casual election and others to step aside. In his view, that shifts power away from voters and towards party decision-makers.

The process is further complicated by Malta’s gender-corrective mechanism, which is applied only after casual elections are concluded.

That means some women candidates may have two potential routes into parliament: first through a casual election and, later, through the gender mechanism.

Grech argues that this can give parties another opportunity to shape the outcome.

For him, the problem is not that casual elections breach the rules. It is that the rules themselves leave too much distance between the voter’s original choice and the final composition of parliament.

The voter casts a ballot in an election, but who ultimately takes a seat can depend on which district a double-elected MP gives up, which candidates submit nominations, how party decisions are made, how vote parcels were formed during the count and how the gender mechanism is applied afterwards.

For Grech, that is the democratic cost of the casual election system.