Do it like the Italians – food, art, and elections.
Americans looking for easy, secure, transparent, accurate and timely elections need only look at Italy. The Italians do it right.
Italian Guya Mariani provided the following description of the Italian voting process:
In Italy, national elections involve a straightforward process for citizens voting at polling stations.
Italians must bring their “tessera elettorale,” a voter card issued by their municipality, along with a valid ID to their designated polling station, typically a local school closed for the occasion. Voting usually spans two days—Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday—to accommodate schedules. At the polling station, voters enter a classroom where booths are set up for privacy.
Before voting, poll workers verify the voter’s identity, record their participation by marking the tessera elettorale and a ledger by hand, and retaining the ID temporarily. Voters then use a special indelible pencil to mark their choice on a pre-printed, watermarked “scheda elettorale” (ballot paper), fold it to conceal the vote, and deposit it into a centrally placed cardboard ballot box visible to all.
The voting process is designed for transparency and security. After marking their ballot in the booth, voters exit and place the folded ballot into the box themselves, ensuring no interference.
Below are replicas of Italian ballots. One image shows a group of ballots from the front when folded (each with a different color). The other image shows the inside of an unfolded ballot. To vote, people place an ‘X’ next to or over the symbol of the party they support. Often, the candidate’s name for that party appears next to or below the symbol. For example, in the US, this would be like marking an ‘X’ next to or over the elephant or donkey symbol, with the candidate’s name listed below. Before leaving the voting booth, you fold the ballot back to its original shape and insert it in a box located in the center of the room. When multiple elections occur on the same day (e.g., for mayor and governor or a referendum), voters receive separate ballots. As shown in the images, these ballots have different colors and are labeled on the front with titles like ‘Referendum on Public Water of June 20 2023’ or ‘Mayoral Election of June 20 2023’ to distinguish them. In such cases, voters receive multiple ballots, mark them separately in the booth, and deposit each into its corresponding box (e.g., a yellow box for a yellow ballot or a green box for a green ballot).
Here are what the ballots look like with each race having a different colored ballot.
Here is a view from the inside of the ballot with multiple options and the voter selects their one choice for this race.
This system is very user-friendly and straightforward, ensuring that even the elderly or less educated feel comfortable voting. Illiterate individuals, who are still surprisingly present in many countries today, including Italy and the USA, can easily recognize party symbols and cast their votes. This simplicity encourages greater participation and enhances electoral turnout. Additionally, it significantly simplifies the vote-counting process for poll workers, as each ballot represents a single vote, reducing confusion and minimizing errors.
P.S. Some ballots, like the one shown, display a party symbol with lines next to it. In Italy, this allows voters to write the name of their preferred candidate for a party that has multiple candidates, in addition to marking an ‘X’ next to the party symbol. However, writing a candidate’s name is optional; voters can simply mark the symbol with an ‘X’ and leave the lines blank. This feature is not relevant to U.S. elections, where primaries already determine a single candidate per party.
Once voting concludes (typically Sunday at 11 p.m.), the poll workers—comprising a president, a secretary, and scrutineers, often with party representatives present as witnesses—begin counting the votes immediately in the same classroom.
The ballot box is opened publicly, and each ballot is unfolded, inspected, and tallied by hand. This open process allows witnesses, including candidate or party representatives, to observe and ensure accuracy, with invalid votes (e.g., those with extra markings) set aside after scrutiny.
After the count, the results are meticulously recorded and communicated to the central national registry. The polling station president compiles an official summary of the vote totals, signed by the poll workers and stamped with the station’s unique seal. One copy of this summary, along with all ballots (valid, invalid, and unused), is sent to the local courthouse for safekeeping and potential recounts, while another is delivered to the municipal electoral office. From there, the municipality aggregates the data from all its polling stations and transmits it to the Ministry of the Interior’s Central Directorate for Electoral Services, which oversees the national tally.
(When the vote totals are announced to the public, they also include the number of “white ballots”—those left blank—which are considered a form of protest vote).
This hierarchical reporting ensures that results are verified at multiple levels before being finalized and announced, maintaining a transparent chain of custody from the classroom to the national level.
(In 2022 nearly 30 million Italians voted in the Italian election. By comparison, 16 million votes were counted in the 2024 election in California.)
Italian Guya Mariani shares how Italian elections are simple and secure.
Guya Mariani on Italian elections being simple and secure@guyamariani pic.twitter.com/jZh5WrzBva
— Joe Hoft (@realJoeHoft) March 29, 2025
The election process in Italy is accurate, secure, transparent, accessible, efficient, relatively inexpensive, and an example the US could follow in part or in whole.
This process is simple and duplicated throughout the country. Italian elections take place in a small room, where they are counted in an evening. This is the least amount of space, handling and time possible. Italian elections don’t have most of the concerns with the current uncontrolled and uncertifiable election process in the US and their results are produced on election night.
If Elections in the US are done like those in Italy, they will be all we ever asked for.
The post CIAO! Italian Elections Are Easy, Secure, Transparent, Accurate, and Timely and Are a Role Model for the US first appeared on Joe Hoft.