Tar annuls elections in Pescara, new vote in 27 sections

A twist in Pescara one year after the elections of 8 and 9 June 2024, which had sanctioned the confirmation of centre-right mayor Carlo Masci in the first round. The TAR, partially accepting the appeal presented by two citizens close to the centre-left candidate and a former municipal councillor, ordered the "annulment of the acts of proclamation of the elected mayoral candidates and municipal councillors", as well as the "obligation to repeat the electoral process" for 27 sections. The judges, among other things, forwarded the acts to the Public Prosecutor's Office to assess the existence of criminal offences.

Carlo Masci, leading a centre-right coalition, had exceeded the 50 per cent threshold by only 584 votes, reaching 50.95 per cent, while the centre-left candidate, Carlo Costantini, had stopped at 34.24 per cent. In the appeal, presented two months after the vote, alleged irregularities were contested in more than two-thirds of the 170 seats. Today, more than a year after that election, after requests for verifications and postponements, the long-awaited ruling has arrived. The judges speak of 'flaws that transcend merely formal aspects' and of 'numerous irregularities', to the point that 'the aim of providing a sufficient degree of certainty regarding the authenticity, reliability and genuineness of the operations and the election result has not been achieved'.

At the heart of the ruling is the concept of the endurance test: 'The number of 584 votes more than 30,952,' they read, 'must be identified as the threshold for the purposes of the endurance test, having allowed the election in the first round'. The number of ballots 'on which there is absolute uncertainty', they write, 'exceeds in itself the number necessary for the purposes of the resistance test' and, consequently, 'the electoral operations must be repeated in all the sections in which the flaw deemed serious was found'. While the Public Prosecutor's Office will have to assess possible criminal offences, 'until the new proclamation, following the partial renewal of the elections, the current municipal elective bodies continue to exercise their functions, as far as concerns ordinary administration and urgent and undeferrable acts,' the TAR writes.

Mayor Carlo Masci announces an appeal to the Council of State, speaks of 'formal errors by the polling station presidents' and says that the ruling 'appears to misrepresent facts and numbers, is distorted in its motivations, erroneous in its conclusions, and above all disrespectful of the will of the people', creating a 'dangerous vulnus'. For Carlo Costantini, 'the TAR has ascertained that the election result is not reliable, not genuine and not true. It will be up to the public prosecutor's office to ascertain whether it was fraud or just irregularities, however serious. The judges,' he concludes, 'have found very serious irregularities that cannot be remedied in any way.