Referendums sunk by abstention, Marco Cappato: “It’s time to abolish the quorum: let’s make those who go to vote decides”

It happened again. The five popular referendums, four at work and one on citizenship, have not exceeded the obstacle of the quorum. The turnout stopped just above 30%twenty points under the 50% threshold plus one, necessary to make the consultation valid.

Exult the center -right, which reads the flop as a signal of consent to the government line. The center -left, however, claims the partial, but significant result: beyond 14 million Italians went to the seats, and are more than those who, in 2022, voted for the center -right parties that brought Giorgia Meloni At Palazzo Chigi.

But in the meantime, Over the past 30 years, on 10 referendum, 9 times the quorum has not been reached: the consultations were frustrated not by the vote against, but by the non -vote.

This is the distortion that Marco Cappato, radical exponent and treasurer of the Luca Coscioni association, he returns to report, asking for a reform of the system. “For heaven’s sake, not going to vote is perfectly legitimate, but it is not that those who do not go to vote must be able to decide even for those who make a short time to go to vote,” he explains on social media. “The time has come to abolish the quorum, which had been set in the Constitution in another era, where everyone went to vote. It is no longer so, and then let’s make those who go to vote decides. He decides who votes. Then we will see in Parliament what the parties who do not defend their referendums are but defend the right to the referendum ».

For Cappato «It is not a question of the right and left. The Italian left has often competed with the right in boycotting the referendums: from the collection phase, to the political judgments of the Constitutional Court, from the boycott of the polls to annex the physiological abstention until the betrayal of the valid referendums won, “he explained on the Daily made. “Every time the blow of sabotage the expression of the popular will succeeds, here are the explanations of the regime: the fault of the too many referendums, explain those who made them out”. But, for him, The referendum is very important, because it is “the” second card “that the Constitution has given us as a weapon To use when the representatives elected with the “first card” does not seem to be doing their job well ».

And that’s why It relaunches the law of popular initiative launched by Mario Staderiniformer secretary of Italian radicals, to allow citizens to express themselves effectively, «as happens In American states and Switzerland, where referendum without quorum are constantly voting on the most disparate subjectswith great satisfaction of the voters, who feel they still count something ».