Malta elects on a national level 6 MEPs representing Malta in the European Parliament, on a district level the legislature, On a local level the Local Councils and on a community level the Administrative Committees. Malta uses single transferable vote to elect its MP/MEP and local councillors. Even though transferable preferences often are used to help third parties, the Maltese voter, since independence, has consistently placed its first-choice vote and its back-up preferences for candidates of one of two dominant political parties, and the country has effectively created a two party system. A third party Representative was elected to Parliament for the first time since Independence in 2017, thanks to the election of the Democratic Party to Parliament as part of the Forza Nazzjonali coalition. Legislature The House of Representatives () has 65 members, elected for a five-year term in 13 five-seat Electoral divisions, called distretti elettorali, with constitutional amendments that allows for mechanisms to establish strict proportionality amongst seats and votes of political parliamentary groups. Latest Legislative elections Timeline of formed governments since 1921 European elections Malta, the smallest EU member state, includes around 0.1% of the total EU population. Maltese voters elect 6 MEPs (5 until 2011) to the European Parliament, or one every 69,342 voters - the lowest population-per-seat ratio in the EU, 10 times smaller than the EU average (680,000) and 20 times smaller than the largest European Parliament constituency. Malta is thus the extreme case in the curve of the degressive proportionality function that allocates European Parliament seats to EU Member States constituencies. European elections in Malta are held according to the single transferable vote (STV) system, consistently with domestic electoral systems and with EU standards requiring proportional representation and use either the list system or STV. Local elections In the 2015 local elections, 16-year-olds were allowed to vote for the first time. On March 5, 2018, 16-year-olds were given the right to vote in general elections and can thus vote in the upcoming 2022 general election Referendums There are three types of referendums in Malta: constitutional, consultative and abrogative referendums. The Constitution of Malta mentions the institute of referendum only in Article 66, sub-articles 3 and 4 (and even then implicitly). Those sub-articles requires that a bill be "[...] submitted to the electors [...] and the majority of the electors voting have approved the bill" in case it modifies: sub-article defining the length of