The latest was in 2016. It was the referendum on drilling for hydrocarbon extraction. Less than one in three voters went to vote. No surprise. The quorum it was not reached as it has happened over the years for most of the referendum questions that citizens feel distant. Those for whom we vote on Sunday, on questions of justice, some of which are particularly technical, they are not predictions of great fortune and like all abrogative referendums they must reach a quorum: 50% plus one of the votes must go to vote. They would not be the first in the history of Italian referendums.
In 76 years of Republican history it has been voted for 73 referendum. They will become 78 with those of Sunday 12 June. 67 abrogative, four constitutional, one consultative and one institutional, the first, the one with which the Italians chose between monarchy and republic, the June 2, 1946. Only in that first question were there symbols on the cards: on the left the face of Italy, a young woman, turreted and on the right the coat of arms of the Savoy kingdom. The turnout is the highest ever reached: ’89, 1%.
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All four constitutional referendums, carried out to change the Constitution, have been done in the last 21 years. Only two have passed: the one on the modification of Title V of the Constitution (2001) and the one on the reduction of the number of parliamentarians (2021). It was a no for the constitutional reform wanted by Renzi in 2016 which also saw his government fall. The only advisory is from 1989. He Passed and gave a constituent mandate to the European Parliament.
Most of the referendums were abrogative, wanted to abrogate, that is, cancel laws. And here is the quorum that has often been lacking in recent years. The opposite of the seventies and eighties of the great battles for the rights in which all exceeded the quota necessary for validity.
The average turnout is just over 52%. The quorums reached so far have been 39 out of 67 questions. From 1974 to 1995 quorums were almost always reached, from then on almost never, often with explicit political indications not to vote.
In the last 25 years, only in 2011 was the quorum reached, to find another one you have to go back to 1995. In 2009 the lowest percentage: turnout stopped between 23 and 24%. There were three political questions: assignment of the majority prize to the most voted list, and not to the coalition, for the Chamber and Senate and the impossibility for a person to stand as a candidate in several constituencies.
The first abrogative referendum was the one on divorce, in 1974. 87.7% of eligible voters then voted, the second highest turnout ever. And divorce has remained among the Italian laws as in 1981 the right totermination of pregnancy. There were then five questions: abolition of life imprisonment, new rules for possession of weapons, and abortion with two questions. One asked for a greater possibility of resorting to termination of pregnancy and one the opposite.
A completely different fate seems to be the turn of the referendums for which we vote on Sunday. Still another would have been if the questions on the Constitutional Court had survived the scrutiny of the Constitutional Court end of life and on the legal cannabis.
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Source: Vanity Fair
