For a crash course in how Italian democracy works, or does not work, go to a polling station. I did this morning and it made my head spin like a radar dish (I am a dual citizen and can vote in Italian elections; today is election day and this is the first time I have voted).
Confusion does not even begin to describe my experience. My local polling station was in a school. The walls of the main hallway were almost entirely covered with vast lists of candidates and their parties. There were separate lists for the Chamber of Deputies (the Parliament's lower house); the Senate (the upper house); the province; the "comune" (the city of Rome, in this case); and the "municipio," the separate regions of the city (the equivalent of councillors, I imagine).
Each level of government had a bewildering array of parties from which to choose. The number ranged from a mere 14 parties for the Senate to 24 for the city of Rome. In total, I had to choose among 94 parties for my five separate votes. To make things even more bewildering, you vote for lists of candidates, not individuals, which in itself makes a mockery of the democratic process. I suffered brain cramps when I realized that some candidates appear on more than one list in different constituencies. Even the ballot itself is not uniform. On three of my five ballots, I simply had to mark an "X" over the party I favoured. On the other two, I had to write my choice of candidate next to the party.
Some of the parties, like Walter Veltroni's centre-left Partito Democratico (Democratic Party) and Silivio Berlusconi's centre-right Popolo della Liberta (People of Freedom), are well known. Others I had never heard of. It was news to me that Antonio Di Pietro, Italy's best-known anti-corruption magistrate, has his own Italy of Values party.
There was a single issue party called Aborto, No Grazie -- Abortion, No Thanks. Another was the National Movement of the Dolphin, which made me laugh. Then I realized that the Italians probably laugh when they see the elephant and the donkey used by the main American parties. There were endless left-wing and communist parties, and a couple of regional sovereignty parties, like Southern Autonomy.
Finally, there was a party that wasn't a party at all. It was the Lista Grillo -- Grillo's List. Grillo is Beppe Grillo, Italy's hugely popular comedian and political commentator whose blog is one of the most popular on the planet. He calls Mr. Berlusconi, who has been prime minister two times already, the "psychotic dwarf" or "asphalt head." He delights in printing the names of parliamentarians who are convicted felons or under criminal investigation. In a recent blog entry, Mr. Grillo said that all the average citizen can do in this election "is make the sign of the cross" because Parliament is about to receive "a a bunch of lovers, wives, sentenced criminals, statute barred offenders, people under investigation and others remanded for trial."
Mr. Grillo himself has vowed never to be a candiate. Yet the few candidates he likes are allowed to use his "Lista Grillo" symbol as an endorsement.
Who got my vote? For the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, I went for Mr. Veltroni's Democratic Party. It was a strategic vote, designed (probably in vain) to keep frontrunner Mr. Berlusconi from winning another term. For my other three votes, I went with the Grillo's recommendations. At least that way I can be reasonably assured the candidates are not felons. In Italy, you vote for the least bad candidate.
