A good number of voting documents for Saturday’s European Parliament and Local Council elections have not been collected from the offices of the Electoral Commission.

In fact, 15,862 voting documents for the EP elections remained uncollected. This is over 5,000 more than the 10,100 voting documents not collected in the first EP elections held in Malta in 2004. This means that of 306,549 voters are eligible to vote out of a total of 322,411 registered voters.

Most of the uncollected voting documents were in the northern areas of Malta, with 2,884 voting documents uncollected in the 12th district and 2,124 in the 10th, although, for the EP elections, Malta is considered as being one whole district. Just 619 documents remained uncollected in the 4th district.

Since Friday is a day or recollection, the party leaders ended their election campaigns late on Thursday.

Things are looking a bit brighter on the local council elections front where a total of 8,830 voting documents have remained uncollected.

These elections will be held concurrently with the European Parliament elections in Mdina, Cospicua, Zabbar, Victoria, Birkirkara, Fgura, Gudja, Gharb, Ghaxaq, Kalkara, Lija, Marsascala, Mgarr, Msida, Naxxar, Pieta’, Rabat, San Gwann, Sannat, Sliema, Tarxien, Xghajra and Mtarfa. There are 132,859 registered voters in those localities.

Figures issued by the Electoral Commission show that while just over 98% of voting documents were delivered in Kalkara, almost 20% of the voting documents in Sliema were uncollected.

MaltaMedia will provide special election coverage starting Saturday, with particular emphasis on Sunday until the official result for the European Parliament Elections is announced. It has already launched a special election blogosphere and will provide an SMS breaking news service on Vodafone number 5090 2060.