Chamber of Deputies gives final approval to the Stabilicum electoral law

The Italian Parliament has given final approval to the electoral law reform backed by the government led by Giorgia Meloni. The vote in the Chamber of Deputies was held by secret ballot, with 227 votes in favour and 164 against.

The reform, known as the Stabilicum, reintroduces preferences into the voting system, albeit in a limited form: lead candidates remain blocked, while voters will be able to express preferences for the other candidates on the list. This represents a change from previous electoral mechanisms, which did not allow for this margin of direct choice for voters.

The parliamentary vote carried political weight beyond the substance of the text: according to reports, if the law had not been approved the Prime Minister would have resigned. The secret ballot thus also represented a test of the executive’s stability, beyond the declared majorities within the parliamentary groups.

It should be noted that the news currently comes from a single source (Today.it, in its parliamentary news coverage); no independent confirmation of the vote tallies or the details of the reform is available in the excerpts consulted.

A secret ballot, by its nature, makes the outcome less predictable compared with open votes tied to party discipline: the final numbers — 227 against 164 — measure a margin that does not necessarily coincide solely with the government majority, given that a secret ballot allows for internal dissent that is not traceable in voting records.

It remains to be seen, in the coming institutional steps, how the new rules on preferences with blocked lead candidates will be applied in the next electoral round. The mechanism introduced by the Stabilicum changes the relationship between voters and lists compared with the previous system, which did not allow for any indication of preference: an element that will directly affect the dynamics of selecting non-lead candidates in the next general election, when the new regulatory framework will find its first practical application at the ballot box.