But how exactly do you vote on September 25th?

There is less than a month to go until the political elections of 25 September 2022 and, for the second time, the so-called Rosatellum will go to vote, named after Ettore Rosato, then a deputy of the Democratic Party and speaker of the law in the Chamber. At his testing ground, in 2018, there was no clear winner from the polls and it took three months to establish the first government led by Giuseppe Conte, with the longest government crisis in republican history. This year, however, the law will operate with two important differences. The first is the extension of the right to vote in the Senate for people who have turned 18, and no longer 25. While the second is the reduction in the number of members of both houses of Parliament: from 640 to 400 seats in the Chamber and from 315 to 200 in the Senate.

Electoral laws are capable of strongly influencing elections. According to the system in which they operate, a few more or less votes can secure a strong majority for parties and coalitions, or condemn them to ungovernable. All electoral systems tend to be inspired by two methods for allocating seats: proportional and majority. These are the first two key concepts useful for understanding how Rosatellum works.

Rosatellum: majority or proportional? Single-member and proportional colleges Blocked lists How do you vote? Multiple nominations Nominations based on gender Barrier threshold Electoral programs 2022 The analysis of the political proposals and projects of the parties running for the elections on 25 September

Arrow Rosatellum: majority or proportional? With the majority system, which rewards the formation of coalitions, whoever gets one more vote than the others gets the majority of seats in Parliament. In every single constituency, coalitions and lists race against each other, each with only one candidate (single-member constituencies) and whoever arrives in first place wins the seat. This is why coalitions are important, managing to make more votes converge in individual constituencies.

With the proportional system, on the other hand, a party obtains a percentage of seats in Parliament based on the votes taken in the elections. For example, a list that gets 20% of the votes will have won 20% of the seats. So in this case coalitions are less important.

Just to make things easier and more understandable to voters and electricians, the Rosatellum is a mixed majority and proportional system. 37% of the deputies and senators are elected with the majority system in the single-member constituencies, 61% are elected with a proportional system in the multi-member constituencies and 2% with the vote abroad. In total 147 seats in the Chamber and 74 in the Senate will be assigned with the majority, while the remaining 245 and 122 with the proportional. Finally, another 8 representatives in the Chamber and 4 in the Senate will be elected by the vote of Italians and Italians abroad through the proportional system with preference voting on a circumscription basis.

Single-member and proportional colleges The Italian territory is divided into 28 electoral districts: 14 coincide with a region, while the remaining one or more provinces of the 6 most populous regions. Depending on the number of inhabitants, each region is assigned a variable number of plurinominal constituencies and for each plurinominal constituency one or more uninominal constituencies are indicated.

For example, the Tuscany district, for the Chamber, has three plurinominal colleges. The first (Toscana 01) includes three single-member colleges: Massa, Lucca and Prato. Each party nominates a maximum of four names in order of preference to the plurinominal college. At the single-member constituency the parties of the same coalition agree to indicate a single name. The voters and the electricians of Massa will therefore have on the ballot the same names as Lucca and Prato for the plurinominal, but different names for the uninominal.

Blocked lists For the seats distributed through the proportional system, parties or coalitions they do not present a single candidate (as in the single-member constituencies of the majority), but a series of candidates listed in a blocked list. This term indicates that voters and electricians cannot express preferences, that is, they cannot decide the name of the candidate or candidate they prefer. On the day of the elections, only people who have already been chosen by the party secretariats and included in the blocked lists will be able to vote.

This system is used to ensure a seat for a political figure, in a constituency where the party is certain of win, by entering his name in that college even if the representative or representative has nothing to do with that territory. In this way, the parties ensure the election of prominent figures, but they encourage the distance between representatives and the electorate. In fact, the parliamentarians no longer need to be connected with the college they belong to and convince tens of thousands of people to write their name and surname in order to be elected.

How do you vote? On election day, for the first time in the history of Italy, all people over 18 years of age will find themselves in front of a ballot paper for the Chamber and one for the Senate. At this point it will be possible to vote by drawing a cross either on the name of the candidate or the candidate in the uninominal or on the name of the chosen party.

If the name of the candidate in the uninominal is crossed out, it will be distributed proportionally to all lists that support it. While if there is only one party, it will take all the votes given to the representative selected for the uninominal. Clearly, disjoint voting is not possible, so it will not be possible to indicate a uninominal name and then choose a list that is in another coalition.

If, on the other hand, you choose to cross the party symbol, with a alongside the blocked list of candidates, the votes will be distributed in a proportional manner based on the result achieved by the party at the national level, for the Chamber, and at regional level, for the Senate. The more votes a party takes, the more parliamentarians it has the possibility to elect.

In this way, if in the single-member constituencies the one who takes one more vote than the others is automatically elected, in the multi-member constituencies the election depends on the result of the party of reference and position in the list. As you can imagine, whoever is first has a better chance of being elected. Therefore it is understood that coalitions are fundamental to obtain most of the single-member constituencies (which are worth 147 seats in the House and 74 in the Senate) because the candidate or candidate has a better chance of winning as it is supported by several parties.

Multiple nominations The same person can appear in a single-member constituency and in several plurinominal constituencies, up to a maximum of five, for the proportional part. If he wins in the uninominal he is elected in that constituency, while if he wins in more plurinominal constituencies he is elected where his list has obtained the lowest percentage of votes. in which people of the same sex are more than 60% of the candidates. Therefore, in a multi-member college with two seats to be assigned, candidates must be a man and a woman, with four seats, up to three men and a woman or up to three women and a man.

Barrier threshold The threshold barrier (ie the minimum percentage of preference for entering Parliament) is set at 3% for parties or lists on a national basis and at 10% for coalitions. In coalitions, the votes of parties that have taken between 1% and 3% pour their votes in proportion to the other lists of the same coalition which have exceeded 3%. While the votes of those who remained below 1% are lost.