Italy's centre-right agrees out-of-town voting, but preference clash clouds electoral reform

The amendment

The centre-right majority on 10 July presented a unified amendment to the electoral law that will allow students, workers and patients temporarily domiciled outside their province of residence to vote in the municipality where they actually live. The provision, signed by Fabio Roscani (Fratelli d'Italia), Luca Toccalini (Lega), Simone Leoni (Forza Italia) and Maria Chiara Fazio (Noi Moderati), covers elections for the Chamber and Senate, European Parliament ballots and abrogative or constitutional referendums.

The amendment provides that students, out-of-town workers and people receiving medical care far from their residence may enrol by 31 December and vote in the place where they are domiciled.

The mechanism avoids creating separate polling stations: voters will be added to ordinary electoral lists in the host municipality and will vote for the candidates of the constituency in which they are domiciled. To qualify, a person must have been temporarily domiciled for at least nine months in a province different from their registered residence and must submit an annual application by 31 December.

A long-standing problem

An estimated 4.9 million people, students, workers and patients, have long been effectively disenfranchised unless they travelled back to their home town. A delegation law adopted in 2023 stalled, and limited experiments were run only for students during the 2024 European elections and for some referendums. The new amendment marks the first permanent, cross-party agreement on the issue within the current legislature.

Preferences still in dispute

Despite the breakthrough on out-of-town voting, the majority remains split on candidate preferences. Lega's deputy group leader Riccardo Molinari made it clear that his party considers the electoral reform a priority of FdI and Giorgia Meloni, not of the coalition as a whole.

Getting stuck on preferences does not seem to make much sense to us. We have already given up on single-member constituencies, and now changing the text again on such a sensitive topic is very complicated.

FdI's group leader Galeazzo Bignami said he was confident a compromise could be found, and organisational chief Giovanni Donzelli recalled that the centre-right has never split on any vote so far. Yet several majority figures privately described the agreement on out-of-town voting as a tactical move to secure a key electoral bloc, while the broader reform remains mired in uncertainty.

Opposition voices

The amendment drew a mixed response from the opposition. +Europa secretary Riccardo Magi said his party would support the text "if they are serious", though he maintained a negative judgment on the overall reform. AVS deputy Filiberto Zaratti invited the majority to engage with opposition proposals, warning that the measure may be of "doubtful efficacy". Azione's Giulia Pastorella noted that the move was welcome but should have been made earlier, and Italia Viva's Marianna Madia said she was waiting for the actual text before taking a position.

If they do not want to produce a propaganda measure, then they should compare notes with our proposals.

Next steps

The Chamber of Deputies will resume its examination of the electoral reform on 14 July, with the deadline for amendments falling the previous day. The out-of-town voting provision is now embedded in a wider bill that the majority hopes to pass before the summer recess. Whether that timetable holds will depend heavily on whether the coalition can settle its differences over preferences in the coming days.