Honestly, I never thought I would have to write this article today, but there it is.

The possibility for citizens to vote away from home in their municipality of domicile has been the subject of campaigns, petition drives and rejected bills for years. It was only at the last European elections and for the citizenship referendum in June 2025 that the Italian legal system finally temporarily waived the provision requiring voters to return to their municipality of residence to vote. In 2024, the derogation was only addressed to students away from home, while for the citizenship referendums it was extended to workers.

While registering lukewarm support, the discipline seemed to usher in the happy trend of encouraging and facilitating popular participation, in a country where abstention has won every election for several years.

Today, with the approach of the very important referendum on 22 and 23 March, in which we will be called upon to confirm or reject the Nordio Constitutional Reform, this process comes to an abrupt halt.

The government’s disinterest

The first powerful alarm bells had already rung with the approval of the ‘Elections Decree-Law’ of 27 December 2025.

The device, approved by the cdm, established certain modalities for the conduct of voting in the referendum. On voting for out-of-towners: silence.

Please note: the ‘election decree’ for the citizenship referendum, approved on 19 March 2025 for the June referendum, already contained the rule regulating voting for out-of-towners.

Little harm, one would say. Since the decree-law has to pass through Parliament for conversion, it can be amended to overcome this oversight.

Twist of fate: on the afternoon of Wednesday 28 January, at the government’s instigation, the Constitutional Affairs Commission of the Chamber of Deputies rejected the amendments tabled to the decree to make it easier for out-of-towners to vote.

Official reason: ‘tight technical schedule’. Actual reason: ‘lack of courage’.

Why ignoring out-of-towners is an own goal for Parliament

Undersecretary at the Ministry of the Interior Ferro‘s justification that there is a lack of ‘technical time’ for the procedural implementation is, to say the least, far-fetched.

We are certainly not asking for a quick approval of the ordinary law on the vote for out-of-towners, which has been at a standstill in the Senate since 2024, but simply a repetition of the temporary procedure already adopted in the last two consultations, for which there is plenty of time.

By deliberately ignoring the petition, 4.9 million people are placed before an unacceptable choice: renounce their vote or pay out of their own pocket to exercise a constitutional right. This is a worrying step backwards, as well as an implicit and avoidable admission of weakness on the part of the governing majority, which is counterproductive in the referendum dispute.

It becomes easy from this perspective to identify the composite category of out-of-towners in theidealistic philosophy student who has moved to Bologna and is geneticallyrabid against the Meloni government, to whom it is convenient to make it difficult to vote. But this is a false representation. Out-of-towners are above all those who work far from home, those who study to build a future for themselves, those who care elsewhere out of necessity. Normal people, not ideological categories.

And among these out-of-towners, like the writer, there are not a few who intend to vote YES to the referendum question .

There is time to go back

We have seen that the technical impediments to the measure are not there. Therefore, to translate into reality the feeble call for participation that resounds more and more witheringly as each consultation approaches; Giorgia, think again.

Allowing out-of-town students to register, within the fourteen days preceding the vote, on the electoral roll of their municipality of domicile would simply replicate a tried and tested procedure, and would not be a cosmetic act. Nor would it be an act of audacity towards alleged red waves of students. It would be a minimal gesture of civil justice, especially necessary on the occasion of a referendum that affects the Constitution and the functioning of justice.

So that participation is facilitated, not hindered in every way.

When politics is afraid of the vote, the problem is not the vote. It is politics

The paternalistic posture of the political class according to which the population is a herd and people deemed to be thinking are dangerous is unsustainable and out of date. Similarly, the ritual lament about abstention, brandished as an emergency only in words, while in deeds obstacles to participation multiply, sounds hypocritical.

In this way, if on the one hand the majority shows its side to the un realistic rhetoric – in the merit of the reform, even rambling – of those who fear a governmental assault on the Constitution, on the other hand the oppositions instrumentalise the choice in referendum terms, putting partisan interests before the protection of the right to participate in political life without barriers. And the system remains immobile.

Concluding this reflection, it is only right to remind those who want to march to the NO front on the issue of the vote for out-of-towners, to sleep peaceful dreams anyway. In March we will vote on the merits of the reform. And those who, like me, are intent on voting YES are unlikely to change their minds, even if they have to overcome obstacles that have nothing to do with democratic confrontation. But the government will not sing victory, and will retrace its steps. Because the right to vote made more difficult today becomes political memory tomorrow. And on certain choices, sooner or later, one always comes back to vote.