Mattarellum Is Not Enough

2011: scandals, corruption, indecision and delays in facing the crisis, coupled with hardheadedness in defending political privileges have drastically reduced the trust Italians place in their political class. It seems as if we are back to the 1990s, when the 1992 financial crisis and Bribesville forced a change in the Italian political system. And now as then there is talk of reforming the electoral law.

In order to overcome the limits of the present system, the so-called Porcellum (a proportional system with majority prize, party-list representation and block voting), a group of politicians and intellectuals is promoting a national referendum to return to the mixed system (75% of MPs elected with first past the post, 25% with a proportional system) that was in force in the elections of 1994, 1996 and 2001, i.e. the so-called Mattarellum, according to the expression coined by political scientist Giovanni Sartori. For the promoters of the referendum, the advantages of returning to the previous voting system would be twofold: defending a political system with two main competing parties, and improving the selection of political personnel, by restoring to electors the choice of voting for the MP of their preference in their own constituency.

Improving the selection of politicians is much needed, but the return to majority rule might not be enough. With the majority system, party leaderships would still be able to "nominate" parliamentarians with the same ease of block voting. You just designate single candidates in constituencies that are considered safe. In majority voting, the power of citizens to choose depends on whether electoral districts are contendable. Even in countries with long traditions of majority rule, such as the US and UK, politicians of opposite factions often collude in electoral redistricting to make constituencies safe for either a party or an incumbent. In Italy, it could predictably become the norm.
To overcome such distortions, the State of California has proposed to entrust an independent commission with electoral redistricting, which would base its decisions of demographic and socioeconomic, rather than political, considerations. Any return to "first past the post" must be accompanied by electoral constituencies that are designed so to make voting outcomes uncertain a priori.
Similar to what is being done with the independent committee that is scaling back the compensation of Italian MPs to EU standards, an independent commission should be appointed to design new voting districts with the aim of improving electoral competition. By reducing the number of districts, so to reduce the number of MPs, the commission would use the time series of electoral results to make voting districts as consistent and contendable as possible. Only by doing so, would returning to the so-called Mattarellum be in the interest of Italian citizens.