Why Meloni wants to change the Rosatellum for a proportional with a prize above 40 per cent

Majority prize instead of constituencies, preferences and/or blocked lists, bar thresholds. You name it. Electoral law reform is an evergreen, a classic of every legislature. With the majority in office, it goes without saying that the majority tries to cobble together the electoral system that is most likely to favour it. Sometimes they succeed (Silvio Berlusconi with the Porcellum that cancelled the Mattarellum) and sometimes they do not (Matteo Renzi with the Italicum first, rejected by the Constitutional Court, and then with the proportional electoral system with a 5% barrier, which was sunk in the secret of the ballot box in the Chamber of Deputies).

The game of changing electoral rules is therefore, if not lawful, cleared by the practice of the last five decades. There is only one rule, strictly unwritten: the law for electing parliament, if it is to be changed, must be changed in the last year of the legislature, if only because no parliamentarian has the certainty of being re-elected and consequently no parliamentarian has any interest in putting on the political table the loaded gun of a new electoral system ready to be used for possible early elections. So why is the topic back on the agenda when the next general elections are due to be held no earlier than June 2027, only three months before the natural end of the legislature? (Last time the vote was held on 23 September due to the sudden fall of the Draghi government, but the agreement between Palazzo Chigi and Quirinale is already that of a slight anticipation so as not to interfere with the budget session and therefore the approval of the end-of-year financial bill). But, above all, what interest does the premier have in changing the electoral law that made her win three years ago when her party is firmly first in the polls, between 28 and 30 per cent, and the centre-right coalition exceeds the sum of the oppositions, a sum that is, moreover, politically very difficult?

Here we need to take a step back. Giorgia Meloni had already made it clear in her press conference at the end/beginning of the year: even if the premierate reform should not be ready for use in time for the next legislature, the electoral law with which we will go to vote between the end of 2027 and the beginning of 2028 may be 'improved'. The idea now prevailing at Palazzo Chigi is to approve the premierate in Parliament calmly and to celebrate the confirmatory referendum only after the policies so as not to run too many risks (the thud of Renzi, who was forced to leave Palazzo Chigi after his defeat in the 2016 constitutional referendum, is always well in the minds of our leaders). But the current electoral law - i.e. the Rosatellum, based on 37% uninominal constituencies and for the rest on a proportional one with blocked lists - has in the eyes of the premier the defect of forcing her into a defatiguing negotiation with the minor parties of the centre-right for the 'division' of the uninominal constituencies. Just one fact suffices: today the League, which in 2022 made its roots in the North count, has 94 MPs out of a total of 600, corresponding to 16% of those elected, when at the ballot box it took just under 9%. But that is not all. There is above all the fact that with the Rosatellum there is no certainty of victory: in 2018 the outcome was that of no majority, so much so that in the last legislature three governments of different political sign were born (yellow-green M5s-Lega, yellow-red led M5s-Pd, Draghi's grand coalition); On the contrary, in 2022, thanks to the fact that the centre-left was divided into three (PD with Avs and Più Europa, M5s alone and Renzi and Calenda's Third Pole), the centre-right managed to win in almost all the constituencies, obtaining a supermajority.

What if in the end the oppositions were to find an agreement by getting all together, perhaps only for an electoral agreement in the constituencies as proposed by a bigwig of the PD such as Dario Franceschini? According to the projections, the united centre-left, from the M5s to the centrists, passing naturally through the PD, would win all the uninominal constituencies in regions such as Campania and Puglia: thanks to the recovery in the South, particularly in the Senate, the centre-left could therefore prevent the formation of a clear centre-right majority. From Palazzo Chigi's point of view, it would be better to opt immediately, even without the premierate, for the solution that has always been preferred by the centre-right and that is also the 'canvas' for the future direct election of the premier: a proportional system with a prize that ensures a 55% majority for whoever wins. In short, there is a Porcellum on the table, but with a threshold to trigger the prize: in 2014 the Constitutional Court, in rejecting that law, established that the prize cannot in any case exceed 15%. 40% threshold, therefore. What to do below that threshold, given the centre-right's and in particular the League's allergy to the national ballot, is unclear. Meloni would be in favour of foreseeing in this residual case a runoff between the first two coalitions, but the resistance of the allies is such that in Fratelli d'Italia they do not rule out any closing rule: if no one reaches 40% the prize is not triggered and the photograph of Parliament remains proportional. An hypothesis that is considered less than residual at Palazzo Chigi, unless one of the allies wants to wipe out Samson (i.e. Meloni) with all the philistines by breaking away from the coalition. Suicide, in short.

With regard to the choice of elected representatives, there are two hypotheses on the table: either small blocked lists of three or four names recognisable to the voters, or blocked list leaders and preference for all the others, which would mean, however, that the small and medium-sized parties would be able to elect almost only the list leaders. A reason, this, for clash with the PD and the M5s, who insist at least formally on preferences tout court (less formally it is true that all party leaders want to control and choose nominations). But, preferences aside, the revised Porcellum contains a real bomb ready to explode under Elly Schlein's Pd and consequently under the entire centre-left: the majority prize, as it was in the Porcellum, carries with it the constraint of the name of the coalition leader and therefore of the premier candidate. For Meloni it is a way to have a de facto premierate as early as the next political elections, with the choice of the premier though not his direct election, even without reforming the Constitution. But this translates into never-ending problems for the constituent broad camp, since there is no premiership recognised by all and since M5s leader Giuseppe Conte does not hide his ambition to one day return to Palazzo Chigi. As the constitutionalist and former PD parliamentarian Stefano Ceccanti says, 'as long as you remain in the Rosatellum you can also make agreements only "in the negative" and not clarify the issue of the premier candidates, but if you move to a law with the majority prize you can make coalition primaries, you can indicate by common agreement a federator, you can also indicate a temporary name and say that in any case the name of the leader of the party that will take the most votes will be proposed: the only thing you cannot do is evade the issue'. Yeah.