Ballots for the elections in Italy.MAURO SCROBOGNA / ZUMA PRESS / CONTACTOPHOTO (MAURO SCROBOGNA / ZUMA PRESS / C)
With elections it happens a bit like with languages: to each one their own seems very simple, but things get complicated for foreigners when it comes to learning grammar.
The Italian electoral system, like all others, has its own, the result of a way of doing things and, in the case of the current elections, attempts to improve it, although in the latter there are opinions for all tastes.
It should not be forgotten that in the years since the proclamation of the Republic in 1946 (18 legislatures) Italy has had 67 Governments.
A number that can be explained, among many other reasons, by an electoral system that allowed parliamentary hyper-fragmentation and a practically equal power of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate to overthrow the Executive.
One of the results was that the vote of any small formation became fundamental.
Moreover, the vote of each deputy or senator (then 945 between them) could cause a new government crisis and in these decades there have been many known as "snipers" who voted against the current president at the last moment and without prior notice. warning.
Elections lasted two days.
Absurd topics aside, Italians, like anyone else, do not like chaos, but it is true that they did not dislike the system at all and even looked with some suspicion at those parliaments made up of monolithic blocks from other latitudes.
But there was a general consensus that a system that would generate parliamentary stability was needed.
The attempts began in 1993. How?
Complicating it even more.
A mixed system was introduced: lists, uninominal and round of repechage.
Since then there have been other laws baptized with names that pronounced in a row seem to be taken from a soccer team trained by Julio César in the Axterix comics: Porcellum, Italicum and Rosatellum.
It is worth noting that Porcellum takes its name from the definition -a
porcata
, bullshit-- who made it the same minister who proposed it!
Italians have voted with Rosatellum —in the countryside since 2018—by which 61% of parliamentarians are elected with the proportional system, 37% with the single majority and 2% representing residents abroad.
If a uninominal candidate is voted for, the voting preference will go to his coalition and vice versa.
All the ballot papers (which bear the logos and names of all the parties and candidates running in a constituency) carry an anti-fraud alphanumeric code that must be verified before depositing them in the ballot box.
Voters have had to choose between 35 party lists that must obtain at least 3% (Brothers of Italy barely got 4% in the last elections) or 10% (in the case of coalitions) of the votes that their election be valid.
All this has happened after two weeks without polls, not to mention the game of coalitions, ruptures and disagreements between political formations.
Just one example: the 5 Star Movement, on the left and which ran alone, formed a government with Matteo Salvini's League just six years ago.
Quick results?
Simple.
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