Electoral law, confidence in the Chamber today: final vote scheduled for Thursday

The new electoral law returns to the Chamber. At 2pm today, 5 October, confidence will be placed on the first two articles of the text, which contain the rules on preferences (as modified in the Senate) and on the third, which redesigns the Trentino constituency.

The vote of confidence will take place between today and tomorrow, while the final vote on the text is scheduled for Thursday 8 October. This is therefore a decisive week for Giorgia Meloni's government and for its "Stabilicum", as the planned electoral mechanism has been renamed. The Prime Minister - mindful of what happened in the first reading in the Chamber - has repeatedly underlined that a possible scuttling of the text, especially by snipers within the ranks of the majority, will have consequences on the stability of the executive.

The electoral law revolves around a proportional system, which however is corrected by a fixed majority bonus for whoever has obtained the highest number of votes, but only if the 42% threshold is exceeded. The mechanism for choosing those elected is a mix of preferences and blocked list leaders. In addition to proportional representation with bonus and preferences, the reform provides for the indication of the prime minister at the time of depositing the mark, a ceiling on the majority seats (220 deputies and 113 senators) and thresholds which remain the same as those of the Rosatellum in order to be able to sit in Parliament (therefore 10% for coalitions and 3% for lists). However, no threshold is foreseen to contribute to the calculation for the purposes of the national electoral figure and therefore the majority bonus.

The text then increases the minimum number of signatures required per constituency from 1,500 to 6,000 for those who do not already sit in Parliament, while those with two groups or at least one group formed by 31 December 2025 remain exempt (the cases of Italia viva and Action, not instead of +Europa or FnV). Instead, the geographical distributions of the Foreign constituency for the Chamber are reduced from 4 to 2 (Europe and non-EU) and from 4 to a single area for the Senate. Non-resident voting is also introduced in the place where one has been temporarily domiciled for at least 9 months (three in the case of people who are outside the Municipality for treatment). During the discussion in the Senate this possibility was extended to caregivers.