Your vote is never wasted.
Single Transferable Vote (STV) — the voting system Malta already uses — explained simply.
Have you been told that voting for a smaller party throws your vote away? It doesn't. Here's why.
You've probably heard this before.
Every election, larger parties warn voters that supporting a smaller party or an independent candidate is "throwing away" your vote. It's a familiar line in Malta, and it works because it's scary.
That fear pushes people to vote strategically rather than honestly — picking who they think can win, instead of who they actually want.
Under Malta's Single Transferable Vote system, that warning is simply not true. Here's how STV protects your vote.
How STV actually works
No jargon. Just the six things that matter — and the plain-English names for them.
Rank your choices
You rank candidates in order of preference: 1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd, and so on — as many as you want.
Five seats per district
Each Maltese district elects 5 MPs, not just one. There's room for a range of voices.
The quota
There's a fixed number of votes needed to win a seat — in a 5-seat district it's roughly 1 in 6 of the votes cast. Cross it and you win a seat.
Officials call this the 'quota' (sometimes 'threshold').
Leftover votes passed on
If your top candidate wins with votes to spare, the extra votes pass to your next choice.
Officials call this a 'surplus transfer'.
Knocked out
If your top candidate is eliminated, your vote moves to your next choice. Nothing is thrown away.
Officials call this 'elimination'.
You stay in the count
Round after round, your vote keeps travelling — until a seat is filled or you run out of preferences.
A vote with nowhere left to go is called 'exhausted'.
Malta's political landscape
Two parties dominate Maltese politics: the Labour Party (PL) and the Nationalist Party (PN). Together they take almost every seat in every election.
Smaller parties — ADPD, the People's Party, ABBA, Volt Malta — and independent candidates have historically struggled to win seats. That track record fuels the belief that voting for them is futile.
With the STV system, that's NOT how it works. A vote for a smaller candidate is NEVER lost. If they don't cross the winning line, your vote transfers to whoever you ranked next. Ranking a small party candidate first simply reduces the big party's first-preference count, which matters for political momentum and party funding.
Source: Maltese Electoral Commission.
Even a tiny slice of first-preference votes still travels through the count — every preference is read, in order, until a seat is filled.
Get inspired. Watch a STV election unfold.
A fictional 5-seat Maltese district with 13 candidates. Click Next round to see how votes travel until every seat is filled.
Your vote travels with you.
You rank your candidates honestly.
If your first choice wins or is knocked out, your vote moves to your next choice.
Your vote keeps counting until a seat is filled.
The only time a vote truly stops counting is if you chose not to rank any remaining candidates — and that is your choice to make.
How to fill in your ballot
You write a number next to a candidate's name — 1 for your favourite, 2 for your next, and so on. That's it.
You don't have to rank everyone. But the more you rank, the longer your vote stays in play.
In Malta, you can vote for candidates across different parties — your preferences are yours alone. Nobody sees your ballot.
- 1ADPD Candidate AADPD – Greens
- 3Independent Candidate AIndependent
- 2Momentum Candidate AMomentum
- 9PL Candidate ALabour
- 13PL Candidate BLabour
- 6PL Candidate CLabour
- 7PL Candidate DLabour
- 5PL Candidate ELabour
- 12PL Candidate FLabour
- 4PN Candidate ANationalist
- 8PN Candidate BNationalist
- 10PN Candidate CNationalist
- 11PN Candidate DNationalist