Friday,
August 03,
Italians Abroad Voting Under Strong
Scrutiny- How Much Reform ?
The
ANNOTICO Report
It's
difficult to predict whether there will be serious conceptual or merely technical, and administrative
changes.
Voting Abroad Reform Being
Studied
Tandem
Aug 5,2007-Aug 12,2007
The procedure for reforming the electoral law "as
regards how Italians living abroad vote" is already underway.
The announcement came last week from Deputy Foreign Minister
The
fact that the committee studying the reform includes staff from the Prime
Ministers office, the Ministry of the Interior and the Foreign Ministry,
however, seems to imply that this will be no simple makeover, but rather a
wide rewriting of the law, and as a consequence also of the application rules.
The
launch of the reform procedure was probably hastened by the criticism addressed
to the law, including the latest allegations of fraud, with a video allegedly
showing multiple ballots being voted by one person in favour
of the same candidate in
The video naturally elicited very different reactions from the opposing
coalitions, with ruling parties questioning it and opposition parties using it
as a reason for requesting yet another recount, or even the annulment of all
ballots cast abroad.
On
the other hand, the centre-left coalition had harshly criticized the Tremaglia
Law even before its entry in force, asking for several changes.
There has also been a court ruling (by the State Counsel), in December
2002, expressing many reserves, some quite severe, on various aspects of
said application rules.
In particular, the reserves concerned protection of personal data, options
offered to voters deleted from the lists, communication from Consular
offices to Italians living abroad, and some inconsistencies between the
law and the rules on how ballots were to be delivered to the Consular
offices.
Danielis announcement came two weeks after the joint declaration issued by
ministers Chiti, DAlema
and Amato, who, after the recent episodes highlighting weak points in the
current law," advocated "a reform of the regulations on how Italians
abroad can vote."
The committee was not given any guideline orienting the reform proposal.
However, on the basis of the most frequent criticism, it is likely that
there will be technical corrections, mostly concerning
how ballots are delivered to voters and/or returned to the Consular
offices.
The Tremaglia Law, in its general formulation, could not account for all the
different mail systems operating in the various countries where Italians reside
and may ask to cast their ballots; there is a formal requirement to put all
voters in similar conditions, and deputy minister Danieli had repeatedly
underscored this need.
Another
issue that the committee might address concerns vote counting; in the first and
only election where Italians voted abroad, counting operations were carried in
one location in Castelnuovo di Porto (near Rome).
Danieli called the location of unacceptable size, with "too many
people working in one place" and "too much confusion."
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