Voting Abroad Is a Serious Matter. And Not for Everyone

Until a few decades ago, emigrating meant losing, de jure or de facto, the possibility of taking part in the elections of one’s country of origin. Today, that is no longer the case. In many western democracies — including Italy — as evidenced by comparative law, there is a clear tendency towards greater recognition of the right to vote of citizens residing abroad. There is, in essence, the belief that such recognition corresponds to a more mature idea of democracy and a fuller realization of the principle of equality. But is this really the case and do all legal scholars agree on this vision? Citizenship and the right to vote have recently returned to the fore in Italy with the so-called Tajani decree on the conditions for Italian citizenship, which has been recently converted into law.

We discuss the issue in this interview with Davide Paris, Associate Professor of Italian and European Constitutional Law at the Bocconi Department of Legal Studies and author of Il diritto di voto preso sul serio. La partecipazione dei cittadini residenti all'estero alle elezioni politiche, (The Right to Vote Taken Seriously. Participation of Citizens Residing Abroad in Political Elections), Bocconi University Press.

Voting should be for everyone. It doesn't matter how strong the connection with the country of origin is for those living abroad. It would be a testimony of democracy and freedom. But you don't agree with that...

Voting follows citizenship. We have people who have lived in Italy for years, work and pay taxes here but cannot vote because they are excluded from citizenship. I start from this consideration: to me, democracy is self-government of the people, and the problem arises when you insert people who in fact will not be governed. Some argue that excluding citizens abroad from the right to vote is comparable to the exclusion of women or people of color that occurred in the past. I disagree, I think that some limitations are not only legitimate, but also necessary if we want voting to be a serious matter. The problem lies in the criteria we choose.

Italian citizens living abroad are a very heterogeneous mix of personal stories and job realities. How can we find the most objective criterion possible?

Let’s take an example: Bocconi students who go abroad to study in France, for instance, with the short/medium term prospect of returning to Italy. We certainly cannot take away their right to vote, which by the way they will not be able to exercise in France because they are not French citizens. It is very different from people who retain Italian citizenship because they have a drop of Italian blood but hardly any ties with Italy. In this case, citizenship merely becomes a formal fact. In my opinion, we need to impose limitations on this latter category, without restricting the others, and the decisive criterion is that, in order to continue exercising your right to vote, you need to have a reasonable connection with that country. Obviously, you need to define what a reasonable connection is.

Let's take a look at what happens in other countries, perhaps those closer to us in terms of traditions and other things. For example, Western Europe.

Certainly. Let's consider Spain. Here, the system of full equality applies, meaning that voting is granted to all those who have Spanish citizenship without any limitation. This creates the problem of overinclusion that we started with. In the United Kingdom (and elsewhere), however, another criterion has been applied for many years: the right to vote of those who live abroad is lost after a certain number of years. The idea is that, as the years away from the country pass, the connection with it becomes more tenuous. In my opinion, this criterion, although not perfect, goes in the right direction and is better than others (for example, owning assets in the country of origin) that could be discriminatory. The flipside is that we can have people who lost the right to vote in their country of origin, and did not acquire citizenship in the country where they reside, and therefore won’t have the right to vote anywhere.

The Italian case is similar to Spain’s, but with some important differences. Can you explain better how the system currently works?

Let's start by saying that the number of Italians voting abroad is huge, about a tenth of the total registered voters, with a high capacity to affect outcomes. So yes, we give the vote to everyone, as the Spanish do, but we grant those living abroad a vote that counts less than those of home residents. In the constituency of Italians abroad, how many voters are there? How many members of Parliament would they be entitled to if we applied the same criteria as to home residents? So, we have decided to give them a smaller number of MPs. And this creates a problem, because we have given too much to some (the descendants of immigrants who went to Australia a century ago, for example) who have no connection with Italy, and too little to others, for example students who are doing their PhD’s abroad. According to the latest data, relating to the 2022 general elections, one MP elected in Italy represented approximately 117,000 voters, while one elected abroad almost 600,000. So, the vote of a resident abroad is worth approximately one fifth of the vote cast by an Italian voter residing in the country.

But the curious fact, I would say almost paradoxical, is actually another…

The constituency of Italians abroad is not a single entity. It has been split into four areas: Europe; South America; North and Central America; and Asia, Africa, Oceania and Antarctica. Following the 2020 reform which cut the number of MPs, in each of these electoral districts it is possible to elect only one senator, but districts do not have the same number of Italian voters: there are many in Europe, many in South America, fewer in North America and even fewer in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Therefore, the voters of the last grouping have much more weight than the first. In practice, if we look at the numbers relating to 2022, we have that the vote of a distant descendant of an Italian living in Sydney, for example, is worth as much as that of 10 doctoral students currently doing research in Geneva. Does this seem normal?

Do citizens abroad, Italians in particular, care about voting?

Turnout among residents abroad is obviously lower everywhere than among home residents. And it is also understandable why this should be the case. However, Italy is not doing badly at all, comparatively speaking. Still considering the 2022 elections, approximately 25% of Italian citizens living abroad voted (over 1 million out of approximately 4 million eligible voters), compared with 63% of home residents. Too few or too many? In Germany (a country that does not have, unlike us, an electoral roll of its citizens abroad) it is estimated that there are approximately 3 million residents abroad, of whom only 120,000 voted in the 2021 elections.

Italians abroad show that they care enough about their right to vote and therefore, consequently, about their origins. But is this enough for them to continue to have the right to vote? You seem to disagree...

The right to vote must be given not on the basis on how much one cares, but on the basis of the bond that one has with a given country and the extent to which the fate of that country also influences the individual fate of that person. We must find a uniform standard that establishes what a reasonable bond with a country is, because citizenship alone is not enough. Certainly, in my opinion, the solution adopted with the 2001 reform has improved things (until the 1990s, anyone who wanted to vote had to return to Italy, and therefore in practice hardly anyone voted) by introducing mail voting, but the system of different voting weights in my opinion does not hold.

However, a way forward must be found, also considering the possibility of a directly elected prime minister that the current majority wants to introduce. In that case, as it already is for referendums, does each vote count the same and citizens abroad could have a higher incidence (too high?).

Especially for constitutional referendums, where there is no turnout threshold unlike abrogative ones, the problem is important. I remember that on the occasion of Matteo Renzi's proposed constitutional reform, minister Maria Elena Boschi for the then center-left majority and Luca Zaia for the center-right opposition went on actual campaign tours in South America canvassing for votes, a rather peculiar fact, just a few weeks before the 2016 constitutional referendum. Moreover, for the upcoming abrogative referendums of June 2025, the vote of residents abroad becomes full again, and so we must ask ourselves whether it is right that the political future of our country depends on such a varied electoral body or whether some distinctions should be made.

The issue has recently returned to the fore with the Tajani decree, which sets more stringent limits for obtaining citizenship for those residing abroad. What do you think of it?

As I explained above, limits must be set and the decree goes in that direction. But there are problems, including constitutional ones. For example, there is the issue of a transitional period from the old to the new legislation, which many believe should be allowed. With the legislation in force before the Tajani decree, some 60 million people in the world were reckoned to be eligible to Italian citizenship but had not applied because they were not interested. However, in the new situation, since they would no longer meet the requirements to vote, they could decide to apply. Can you imagine the amount of workload that would clog up our consular offices, municipal registries, and courts? Without obviously forgetting the matter of organizing the actual vote.