The worldwide elections for the new COMITES, a revamped Italian government agency, organized to represent the Italian citizens living in the United States to Italian consulates and regional/local authorities, closed Friday, March 26, 2004.

Our GOOD Friend Franco Giannotti, Publisher of Internet Portal, "Italy
at St.Louis" and his ally, Antonino Lombardo, Publisher of "Il Pensiero", Newspaper were elected to a 5-year term in the new COMITES for the Chicago based 11-state consulate district commanding very respectable 3rd and 4th places within winning List #1, Comitato Tricolore per gli Italiani nel Mondo.

Two other lists competed with CTIM for a total of 40 candidates, only 12 of which were elected.There was an overwhelming victory for List #1 CTIM, with 57% of the votes, versus List #2 with 33% and List #3 with 10% of the votes.

Antonino Lombardo and Franco Giannotti comprised the St. Louis team, and they faced nearly impossible odds considering that of the ballots mailed by the consulate office to the some 17,000 eligible voters in the 11-state consular jurisdiction, in excess of 13,000 went to voters in the state of Illinois (mostly Chicago) and less than 700 came to Missouri, including the Kansas City area.  The remaining ballots were distributed among the other 9 states that make up our consular jurisdiction.

As a result, St. Louis will be the only major city outside of the Chicago area to be represented.

Giannotti and Lombardo, besides using traditional informational avenues, relied heavily on INTERNET Resources. Thus, in addition to good exposure in St. Louis’ newspaper “Il Pensiero”, and Radio Italia 24 Ore, they made good use of  the “www.italystl.com” portal and the “www.comites.org” web sites, as well as extensive use of e-mail resources, and they were able to engage voters in the 9 “minority” states.

A general mailing to the same outlying areas of a descriptive flyer about the election and the issues at stake contributed added exposure to their candidacy. This was probably the first such attempt to get the long forgotten more distant voters involved in what in the past had been considered strictly a Chicago event.  Obviously it paid off.

The WINNING CANDIDATES:
All except GIANNOTTI and LOMBARDO from St. Louis are from Chicago

LIBERATI Angelo        Tricolore
GIANNOTTI Franco        Tricolore
LOMBARDO Antonino Tricolore
SCIORTINO Luigi        Tricolore
CAPONIGRO Raffaele Tricolore
GONNELLA John              Tricolore
TERENZIO Vito Antonio Tricolore
BRUNO Giuseppe (Joe) Comit-usa
IONTA Anna Clara        Comit-usa
PORTO Leopoldo Dino Comit-usa
TURANO Renato              Comit-usa
TARANTINO Pietro        Viam