Quarantined Italian MPs gear up for drive-in vote for new president

Italian parliamentarians who have Covid-19 may be allowed to cast their ballots for Italy’s new president from a car park.

More than 1,000 MPs and regional delegates will begin voting on Monday, and amid a debacle over who the next head of state should be, the coronavirus pandemic is posing logistical challenges.

About 35 of the so-called “grand electors” are in quarantine with Covid-19, and to ensure a fair election and that quorum requirements are met, Roberto Fico, the lower house speaker, has suggested allowing them to vote in the car park of Montecitorio palace, the seat of the chamber of deputies.

The proposal will be discussed on Friday and will go ahead if the government grants the voters a permit to leave their homes.

It is unclear how the “drive-in” vote will work, but according to reports in the Italian press, electors could either cast their votes from a booth set up in the car park, or from their car. Either way, they will not be there to “watch a film, order something to eat or take a Covid test,” Niccolò Carratelli wrote in La Stampa. “We’ve never seen a drive-in polling station before.”

Meanwhile, Guido De Martini, a lawmaker in the far-right League party and rebel against Italy’s vaccine mandate, said he felt like “a panda heading for extinction” as he would not be able to travel to Rome from his home in Sardinia without the “super green pass” needed to prove double vaccination.

“I can’t get on a plane or ferry without the super green pass,” De Martini told La Stampa. “I thought about booking a private plane, but it costs too much. My battle is one of principle, of liberty … I am not against vaccines, I am against obligatory vaccines.”

He added that if there were a smaller stretch of sea between Sardinia and the mainland, he might have considered swimming. “I love running and cycling, but especially swimming in the sea. But the crossing from Sardinia would be too tough.”