Electoral law in the Senate and anti-Semitism bill in the Chamber: the week in Parliament

On September 7, 2026, the Senate committee resumed examination of the electoral law. The starting point is the amendment approved the previous week on the initiative of the centre-right, which reintroduces preferences: this is reported by the newsfeed of the Dire agency, picked up by Ragionieri e Previdenza, and the reconstruction of parliamentary proceedings published by Il Post frames the same passage.

The procedural detail that matters more than many statements is this: in the Chamber the same amendment had been rejected by a vote against it. The reintroduction of preferences, therefore, is not a settled point in the legislative process but a choice that the two chambers have so far treated in opposite ways. A text that changes sign moving from one branch of Parliament to the other is bound to go back.

What is missing

Two elements remain to be defined which, in an electoral law, matter as much as everything else: the threshold and the runoff mechanism. The threshold decides which forces enter Parliament; the runoff decides how the majority is formed. Until those two points are put in writing, the voting system cannot be described: preferences concern the relationship between voter and elected official, not the way votes turn into seats.

The opposition is protesting. Movimento 5 Stelle leader Giuseppe Conte has contrasted the government’s focus on electoral reform with the responses that, in his view, should be given to those in difficulty. As far as we can tell from today’s sources, there is no unified text on file and public: the discussion is still within the committee.

The anti-Semitism bill

The second front is in the Chamber. The bill against anti-Semitism is expected to be put to a vote in the Constitutional Affairs Committee in the coming days. The news currently comes from a single source (the Dire agency newsfeed, picked up by Città di Napoli); no independent confirmation available, nor a firm date for the vote.

ANPI, together with Amnesty International, FNSI and other associations, has announced a sit-in at Montecitorio for Wednesday from 1pm. In the statement released, the association describes in these terms the effect it attributes to the measure:

“a very serious violation of political, cultural and academic freedoms” — ANPI, national association of Italian partisans

Fratelli d’Italia senators reject the accusation of gagging and argue that the text leaves intact the possibility of criticizing the policies of any government, including the Israeli one. The two readings do not touch each other because they concern different things: on one side the stated intention of the sponsors, on the other the effects that the signatories of the sit-in attribute to the wording of the rule.

What we don’t know

We do not have the text of the anti-Semitism bill in the version that will come to a vote, and without the text it is not possible to measure either thesis: the definitions adopted, the scope of application and any safeguard clauses are exactly the point under discussion. On the electoral law we do not know the schedule of work nor which amendments on the threshold and runoff have been filed.

Two dates are fixed: the sit-in on Wednesday from 1pm in front of Montecitorio and the continuation of the committee examination in the Senate. The rest — votes, texts, timing — is a matter for the coming sessions.