08.08.2026, Italy.
The electoral law was written with a united right-wing bloc against fragmented leftists in mind, but the situation has changed
The fight over a new electoral law has become the main storyline in Italy and has already cost Giorgia Meloni’s government one of its most high-profile crises since it took office. The bill has been given the working name “Stabilicum” – from the word “stability.”
Here’s how it works. First, seats are divided among parties proportionally based on votes: get 10% – get roughly 10% of the seats. But if one list or coalition gets 42%, they receive a bonus on top of that: up to 70 additional seats in the Chamber of Deputies and up to 35 in the Senate. In total, the winner gets about 55% of parliament – a stable majority that allows laws to be passed without regard for the rest. If no one reaches 42%, no bonus is awarded, and seats are divided strictly by votes.
There are other changes as well. Previously, some deputies were elected in constituencies where the candidate with the most votes won – those constituencies have been abolished; now all seats are distributed only through party lists. Each coalition is required to name its candidate for prime minister before the elections. And most importantly, the lists have been made “closed“: voters vote for the party as a whole and cannot write in a specific name; who exactly enters parliament is determined by the order in which candidates are placed by the party leadership.
There is a long-standing tradition in Italy: ruling parties rewrite voting rules to suit themselves shortly before elections. Officially, the reform is sold under the slogan of combating chronic government instability. In reality, however, the motive is quite different – the unwillingness to lose power.
The spring of 2026 brought Meloni a series of blows. In March, the constitutional referendum on judicial reform failed: 53.7% of Italians voted against it with record turnout. In May, the right failed to recover in the municipal elections. The economy is stalling: the IMF lowered its GDP growth forecast to 0.5%.
The 42% threshold was not chosen by chance: in the spring, the coalition’s support was at 43-46%, and the threshold was set exactly at the level of its own rating. The law allows the country to be governed as if the coalition had been voted for by an overwhelming majority, although in reality, less than half of voters would have voted for it.
The argument about stability does not hold up to scrutiny. Italian governments fall apart not because voters did not know the prime minister’s name in advance, but because conflicts begin within the coalition. A pre-announced name will not prevent Matteo Salvini’s “League” or Antonio Tajani’s “Forza Italia” from leaving the majority a year after the elections.
There is also a second goal of the bill – to corner the opposition. The right-wing coalition is united; the left and centrists are fragmented. If they run as separate lists, the right will almost certainly get 42% and monopolize parliament. That means they will have to merge into a broad bloc, overcoming disagreements – in the hope that such an alliance will look weak and perpetually quarrelling.
By mid-July, the reform reached the floor of the Chamber of Deputies, and here the majority unexpectedly lost: on July 14, in a secret vote by a margin of one vote, 188 to 187, an amendment supported by the government was rejected.
The amendment did not concern either the bonus or the 42% threshold – these mechanisms remained untouched. It only slightly opened up the closed lists: the first name would still be appointed by the party, but then the voter could write in up to three names of their choice. In Italy, such marks are called preferences. Against it voted, according to various estimates, from thirty to fifty deputies of the majority itself – no one will know the exact number, since the vote was secret.
The motive of the deputies who refused to support the amendment has nothing to do with protecting the voter. With closed lists, a deputy’s fate is decided not at the polling station, but in the office where the list is compiled, and the only thing that matters there is loyalty to the leadership.
Preferences turn this logic upside down: for a mandate, one has to fight personally and compete not so much with the opposition as with fellow party members. For many, this is a death sentence: they entered in 2022 on the wave of the coalition’s overall success, without a personal electorate or local connections – in the struggle for preferences, they would be overtaken by local heavyweights. The deputies defended their own seats, and they managed to do so only under the cover of a secret vote.
The opposition immediately demanded the government’s resignation. Meloni responded briefly and sharply: “We tried, the swamp won again.” And already on July 16, the same Chamber adopted the law as a whole – 217 to 152 – and sent it to the Senate. There is no contradiction here: by rejecting the amendment, the deputies preserved the closed lists, that is, they got what they wanted.
So the government lost on a private issue but won the main thing: the mechanism that turns 42% of votes into control over parliament remained in the law. The victory, however, came at a high cost. The majority, which promises the country stability, could not maintain order on one amendment to its own bill. And most importantly – Meloni sought preferences not out of love for direct democracy: fully closed lists are legally vulnerable, and preferences would have covered that loophole. Now the law goes to the Senate without such protection.
On July 20, “Stabilicum” entered the relevant Senate committee, by July 30 expert hearings were completed there, but the decisive vote was postponed until September. The pause was taken deliberately: the right needs to let the scandal settle down. There is also a personal reason not to take risks right now: on September 4, Meloni’s government will become the longest in the history of the Italian Republic.
Further, everything is decided by a simple rule: the law comes into force only when both chambers have adopted exactly the same text. If the senators vote word for word – the reform will become law in the autumn. If they change even one line – the document will return to the Chamber of Deputies for a new reading, where a secret vote is again possible, meaning there will be a new chance for rebels.
In a month, the legal questions have only increased. The hearings highlighted what was previously discussed less: the constitution requires senators to be elected from the regions – each region receives its own quota of seats, and votes are counted within it. The bonus, however, is calculated based on the national result, and how to reconcile one with the other, the authors of the bill have not clearly explained. Some lawyers consider this a direct violation of the constitution.
The second vulnerability is closed lists. It was precisely because of them that the Constitutional Court struck down the then electoral law in 2014, ruling that a voter deprived of the opportunity to choose a specific person essentially does not choose their representatives. The third mine was laid by the authors themselves: votes of allies who do not reach 3% are not counted at all when calculating the coalition. Because of this, a bloc that actually gathered more votes may on paper turn out to be smaller than its rival – and the bonus will go to the one who lost the election.
But the main problem turned out to be not legal, but arithmetic. The 42% threshold was adjusted in the spring to a rating of 43-46%. By early August, the center-right collectively polls at 41.6% – below its own threshold. Meloni’s party has dropped to 26.5-27%, its worst result of the legislature, the “League” to 5%. The opposition collectively gives 44.3%, but this is precisely a sum, not an alliance: the Democratic Party, the Five Star Movement, and the Greens have not created a single list.
One of the reasons for the center-right’s collapse is a new competitor on the right: Roberto Vannacci’s “National Future” has grown to 7.1% and become the country’s fifth party, taking votes primarily from Salvini. And here the reform turns against its authors: the law was written with a united right-wing bloc against fragmented leftists in mind – and the right flank is also becoming fragmented.
Without Vannacci, the coalition does not reach 42% and gets nothing; with Vannacci, it surpasses 48% and takes everything. At the same time, the law hits the general himself: only parties that had a parliamentary faction by the end of 2025 are exempt from collecting signatures to participate in the elections – “National Future” is not on this list.
So Meloni found herself in a position she did not anticipate: the machine built for a monopoly on power now only works on the condition of an alliance with the one she planned to absorb. The mechanism designed as insurance against defeat has become a barrier that the right has yet to overcome.
Italy may well get the very fragmented parliament that the law was written to combat. And the outcome of the 2027 elections will be determined not by the 42% bonus, but by whether Meloni can come to terms with General Vannacci.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
