democracy - Vision the Italian Think Tank

decide to divide her/ his own vote and decide to use to express a preference withinthe constituency to which he/she feels to belongs.Such citizenships can be different because they can correspond to different cities, ornations. But we should also be able to demonstrate that we are instead “Europeans”or decide that we belong to communities that are not defined by any geographicalterm, but are instead referred to cultural, professional, or even single political issues.In any case constituency will have to be something different from an “interest group”and will need to correspond to a political arena divided internally in more than onepolitical position.There are obviously a number of problems to be solved: regulations will provide forthe possible constituencies to be limited to a list of significantly enough group ofcitizens (and thus electors will have to choose among such a menu of possibilities)and to avoid fragmentation of the system into “corporations”; the choice of theconstituency will stay the same for a number of years and rules will avoid abuses ofthe system such as changing electoral body just for the purpose of giving the vote tosomebody who is candidate in that body.These are, in fact, long term possibilities because such radical revisions of therepresentation mechanisms are, evidently, correlated to more complex changes in thefiscal system and into the distribution of competencies between distinct institutionallevels.In the short term however, we need to do something and to experiment some form ofdeviation from the geographically based constituencies.Voters have to be able to, and even more to those of the European elections, choosebetween regional and European or national based constituencies. And more rapid,flexible and concrete has to be the chance for any European citizen (or foreignworker) to participate in the elections in the country he/she works. We also need tofind the mechanism that makes possible to distribute one’s vote among more localelections if one commutes between different places and pays taxes to more than onecity council.These operations are all possible even if these institutional changes require a strongwill to bring innovation in mechanisms that many think unchangeable. And even ifthe electronic vote, and more precisely, the electronic choice of the constituency tobelong to that would be necessary for the reforms we are envisaging, still presents anumber of technical difficulties.The technology that would replace the electoral list as a physical archive (and thevoting station as a physical place for expressing their preference), makes it possibleto realize what previously was extremely expensive and complex.Certain costs have become a fraction of what they used to be and it is certainlytechnologically possible to imagine electoral boards that in a more flexible wayreproduce the articulation of a Society that in the mean time has greatly evolved.28