In April 2006 Italy's election was almost a perfect tie: out of 38 million votes for the lower house, the winners were ahead by about 25,000. They still entered parliament with 67 more seats. The rule that did it had been passed less than four months earlier, by the side that lost.
On 8 October 2026 Italy's parliament passed a new rule of the same family: an alliance with 42% of the vote receives up to 70 extra seats in the lower house. It is the fourth election law in twenty years.
Why does Italy keep rewriting this rule?
In 1923 Mussolini's government passed the Acerbo law: the largest party, with at least a quarter of the vote, took two thirds of the seats. But the tool did not stay with its inventors. In 1953 the Christian Democrats passed a law giving 65% of the seats to any alliance with more than half the vote; they missed by about 55,000 votes and the law was repealed in 1954. In 2005 the right passed a bonus; in 2015 the centre-left passed one too.
From the late 1940s to the early 1990s seats followed votes closely, and small parties could always hold the balance. Between 1946 and 1993 Italy went through about fifty governments. A bonus is meant to let one alliance govern for five years; it does not always work (the 2006 winner fell within two years when a small partner walked out). Its price: if 42% of voters get more than half the seats, 58% get less than half.
Italy's Constitutional Court has struck down election laws twice. The 2005 law gave its bonus with no minimum; the court ruled it unconstitutional at the end of 2013 (decision 1/2014), after it had already elected three parliaments. The last of them wrote the next law, and the court struck part of that one too (decision 35/2017) before any election was held under it.
In Italy, as in most democracies, the formula that turns votes into seats is an ordinary law, passed by a simple majority elected under the old formula. The 2005 and 2017 laws were passed about four months before the elections they governed; the 2026 law about a year before the next one is due. The pen does not decide who wins, as 2006 showed, but it lets its holder choose what counts as winning. In Italy it changes hands often, because each court ruling leaves a hole that whoever holds the pen that year gets to fill.
| Rule | Seats of 400 | Share |
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Write it into the constitution. Ireland did in 1937. The governing party twice asked voters to switch to a system that tends to hand the largest party a majority; voters said no in 1959 (52–48) and in 1968 (61–39). Price: any flaw is locked in too, and the government still picked the moment, holding the 1959 vote on the day its own leader ran for president.
Give it to citizens. New Zealand: an expert commission in 1986, referendums in 1992 and 1993, proportional representation chosen by 54%. British Columbia: 160 citizens chosen at random proposed a new system; in 2005 it won 58%, short of the 60% bar the government had set in advance. Price: slow, and those in power still write the question and set the bar.
Start a clock. Brazil's constitution (Art. 16): a law changing the electoral process does not apply to any election within a year. The Venice Commission recommends the same, as advice. Italy's 2026 law, about a year before the vote, would sit almost exactly on that line. Price: a clock delays a change rather than preventing it, and it also blocks an urgent fix after a court ruling.
The size of the bonus and the percentage that unlocks it are the second question.
Who held the pen, how many months before the election did they write the rule, and who, apart from the people that rule elects, could ever undo it?