Malta: Formulaic Matrix Malta Primary Districts Secondary Districts (national) Parties -- (2) "Malta introduced a contingent higher tier before the 1987 election: if the party winning a majority of first preference votes does not win a majority of the lower-tier seats, it receives a sufficient number of upper-level adjustment seats to ensure it a parliamentary majority" (Lijphart 1994, page 36). A 1996 amendment to Article 52 of Malta's constitution extended this contingent higher tier provision to cases in which one party wins a mere plurality (rather than a majority) of the votes, as long as only two parties win any seats in the initial allocation. Candidates (1) STV system. (3) Additional upper-level adjustment seats are allocated to those candidates of the winning party who received the highest numbers of votes without being elected, irrespective of the districts in which each initially competed. 65-member House of Representatives.