Italian Citizenship Referendum is invalid after low turnout

The referendum in Italy to mitigate the rules of citizenship and the improvement of the rights of workers was declared invalid.

About 30% of the voters participated – there is very much lack of 50% of the threshold required for the voting – in the poll, which started on Sunday and Monday was held until 15:00 (14:00 BST).

The newsletter presented five questions that cover different issues, including a double -lesser proposal that a person must live in Italy before they could apply for citizenship from 10 to five years.

The referendum was initiated by the initiative of citizens and with the support of civil society groups and trade unions, all of them campaigning for the vote “yes”.

For them, the results – at what level of turnout up to 22% in regions such as Sicily and Calabria is a blow.

Achieving 50% of the threshold will always be a struggle – not least because the Italian government, led by the Hard Right Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, has largely ignored the referendum or actively interfered with voting.

“Let it be slightly above 30% or just below 30%, this is a low figure lower than expectations and goals set by promoters,” said Lorenzo Pregliasco, founder of YouTrend’s political election campaign, Italy’s Skytg24.

Last week, Meloni announced that it would boycott the vote, announcing the existing Italian citizenship law “excellent” and “very open”. On Sunday, she visited the election station in Rome but did not vote.

But the activists claimed that the 10-year expectation to apply for citizenship was too long, and that a decline of up to five years would lead to Italy in accordance with many European neighbors.

Shortly after the closure of the polls, the Italian Brothers Party (FDI) Meloni posted the image of opposition leaders on Instagram with the signature: “You lost!”

“The only real purpose of this referendum was to overthrow the Meloni government.

Pina Picardna from the opposition Democratic Party (PD) said the referendum was “deep, serious and avoided defeat” and called the inability to reach 50% of the threshold “a huge gift of Georgia and law.”

Half a million signatures are obliged to call a referendum in Italy. However, there are now calls to increase this threshold to reduce the number of votes set for the public.

“We spent a lot of money to send … millions of ballots abroad for Italian (exhibits) for voting, and they were wasted,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Monday.

Only about half of the 78 referendums held in Italy from World War II have attracted enough votes to make them mandatory.

The first, which took place on June 2, 1946, causing 89% of the Italians to go to the polls and just over half the vote to replace the monarchy with the republic.

In the following years, abortion and divorce referendums were also successfully conducted.

The latest referendum, which reached the threshold, was the 2011 vote against the law that privatizing water services.