Italy: Alleged fraud of one of Argentina’s elected senators may force changes in voting from abroad | The complaint against Adriano Cario sparked a political battle

from Rome

The case of an Italian senator apparently fraudulently elected in ArgentinaA battle broke out between parliamentarians and politicians in Italy It could end not only with the impeachment of the accused parliamentarian but also with implications for the law regulating the voting of Italians abroad. vote which The Consulate sends the necessary papers by mail to the home of the stakeholder and he must return them by mail to the Consulate Once you type the name of the preferred candidate. A very different system from how Argentines living abroad, who have to register at the consulate and appear in person to vote on election day, vote.

In either case, voting is not mandatory, but given the number of Italians in Argentina (most likely descendants of Italians but holding citizenship), distributed in large areas such as the province of Buenos Aires, in-person voting was organized in offices set up by the Consulate. It will have very high costs. Buenos Aires, just to give an example, is divided into 99 divisions for the Italian elections.

Complaint against Senator Adriano CarrilloOf Sicilian origin but Born in Uruguay and later set up in Argentina, he was unleashed after the Democratic senator candidate. (center left) Fabio Porta, who was not elected, filed a complaint of electoral fraudNS. Porta, a former deputy who was born in Sicily, ran after living in Brazil for 20 years.

Carrillo was elected senator in 2018 as the representative of the South American Federation of Italian Immigrants (USEI). Then he went to MAIE (the Movement of the Association of Italians Abroad) which was founded by the current senator in Italy and former Italian-Argentine MP Riccardo Merlo.

According to various sources, since the 2006 elections, there have been frequent reports of electoral fraud in voting abroad. But no complaints have come forward like this.

Of the 99 departments in Buenos Aires, at least 32 will be suspects in the 2018 elections Among them, an abnormal concentration of votes appeared in favor of Carlo, according to what he said the page Former Senator candidate in that election, Fabio Porta.

When Porta filed a complaint of fraud with the Senate, the Board of Elections in that chamber appointed a commission to analyze the data from Argentina. In parallel, due to Porta’s complaint, The Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation Conclusion that there was indeed a fraud Because the same hand wrote Cario’s name in many voices, according to what the responsible calligraphers can explain. According to what the prosecution was able to verify, a total of 2,140 votes would have been manipulated in favor of Cario in the five departments analyzed in Buenos Aires.

And after hearing the results of the investigation conducted by the committee and the prosecution, The Board of Elections secretly voted in early November on the issue. The result was negative and Carrillo continued to serve as a senator. According to Maurizio Banez, Carrillo’s defense attorney, the examination by the prosecution would not be correct because it indicates few divisions and few votes.

The vote within the Board of Elections also created a divide between the Democratic Party and the Five Star Movement (M5S), which had been allies in recent times. It appears that the M5S senators voted for Cario because MAIE, to which Cario belongs, would have supported the Giuseppe Conte M5S government in the 2018-2019 parliamentary disputes.

The battle doesn’t end here anyway because the Senate has the final say and will have to vote definitively, possibly on December 1, but that’s not yet known for sure.

“The Senate’s disapproval of this fact would amount to a real delegitimization of voting abroadWorse, said Porta, an economic sociology graduate at the University of Rome La Sapienza who has worked for various organizations linked to Italians abroad, said it would legitimize and legitimize the impunity for those who have committed similar crimes. He was a deputy for two parliamentary sessions and in 2018 he ran for the Senate.

Regarding the vote in the Senate, Porta stressed that “we members of the PD request that this vote take place soon. It has been many years since the event and this may have consequences for the upcoming elections.” He said that in addition to filing a complaint with the Italian justice that ordered the investigation and the work of the calligraphers And seizing the material, he recently filed a complaint with the Argentine judiciary, adding the evidence of experience provided by the Italian justice that expired a few days ago. But there has been no response to this so far. Porta concluded that “practice tells us that this voting system abroad does not work “.

Donato Di Santo, former under-secretary of state with delegate for Latin America and former Secretary-General of IILA (Instituto Italo Latinoamericano) in Rome, said the “Italians Abroad Vote” law has many flaws. “If there is fraud, it is a slap in the heart of democracy. He added, “I hope that when the Senate votes on impeachment, it will take into account the results of the investigation conducted by justice.”. To avoid undoubtedly this kind of problem, Di Santo concluded, “two things must be done: clean up the current situation that has been going on for many years and review the electoral law for Italians abroad.”