Italy's Chamber of Deputies gave final approval on October 8 to the government's rewrite of the national electoral law, passing it 227 to 164 in a secret ballot after the Senate had already cleared its own version. The bill now goes into effect roughly a year before the country is next required to vote, and it changes a basic fact about how Italian elections work: a coalition no longer needs to win outright to govern outright.
The mechanism is specific. Any party or coalition that takes at least 42 percent of the seats in both the Chamber and the Senate is topped up with bonus seats on top of what it earned at the ballot box, up to 70 extra in the 400 seat Chamber and up to 35 extra in the 200 seat Senate, enough to push its working majority to roughly 56 percent of each chamber. Miss that 42 percent bar in either chamber, and the bonus disappears entirely. Seats are then handed out in strict proportion to the vote, with no guaranteed majority for anyone.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni framed the result as an answer to a problem Italy has lived with since the war, built not for her coalition specifically but for whoever wins. The reform, she said after the vote, will promote the stability and parliamentary coherence of any government, regardless of its political color. The opposition heard a different argument in the same bill. Five Star Movement leader Giuseppe Conte led floor opposition alongside the Democratic Party, while Italia Viva's Matteo Renzi accused the governing coalition of pushing the reform through out of fear of losing power rather than any commitment to stability. The most pointed protest came from outside the chamber entirely: More Europe leader Riccardo Magi went on a hunger strike over the bill, calling it anti-democratic.