The number of people who did not bother collecting their voting document almost doubled when compared to the 2014 European election.
Data released by the Electoral Commission showed that, by midnight on Thursday, the number of uncollected voting documents amounted to 38,737, or 10.4 per cent of the 371,625 registered voters.
At the last round of the MEP elections five years ago, 21,856 voters had not collected their voting documents. That was 6.3 per cent of the 344,374 people eligible to vote.
92,398 failed to collect their voting documents in local council election
With regard to the local council election, 92,398 failed to collect their voting documents out of the 433,481 people eligible to vote. This translates into 21.9 per cent of the eligible voters.
No comparison can be made in this case because this is the first time that an election is being held for all 68 local councils. The total percentage of uncollected votes in the 2013 and 2015 council election was 12.9 per cent, or 50,035 documents.
According to a breakdown by locality, the highest number of uncollected voting documents was in St Paul’s Bay, where 32.1 per cent of those eligible to vote did not pick up the document. This was followed by St Julian’s, with 26.3 per cent, Gżira and Sliema, with 25.3 per cent and 25 per cent respectively.
Santa Luċija posted the lowest number of uncollected votes, with 1.8 per cent of those eligible not bothering to take their voting document.
In Gozo, Żebbuġ had the highest number of uncollected documents at 22.8 per cent. Kerċem and Fontana, with 5.5 per cent each, had the lowest uncollected vote figure.
Polling stations will be open between 7am and 10pm today. An indication of the outcome of the European poll is expected tomorrow morning, some time after 7am, though the official results will only be announced at 11pm since there are a number of countries where polling stations close at that hour.
Priority access will be given to voters going abroad tomorrow.
The Electoral Commission said that the use of mobile phones, cameras and photographic equipment in polling places was prohibited.