Voting Italian style.
The Prodi government here in Italy has collapsed and the 2008 primary season is in full swing in the United States so I thought it would be interesting for Americans to see what some of the choices that would be facing an Italian in an election. In an election in the US there are two main parties and maybe three other parties represented on any given ballot, in New Mexico we had the Green and Libertarian on most ballots.
The Italian newspapers report on three candidates in the US primaries: Hillary, Obama and Giuliani. I have had to explain to more than one Italian that there are more candidates than just these three since the media coverage here gives the impression that th ose three are the only ones running. Giuliani because of his Italian heritage, Hillary is a media favorite on both sides of the Atlantic and Obama because he is an African-american.
I took this photo this past summer of a poster advertising an upcoming municipal election in a town in Abruzzo and it lists thirteen parties. In America you are hard pressed to get members from the two prominent parties to agree on anything, no wonder Italy has so many problems reaching a majority rule after their national elections.
4 comments:
Interesting. Thanks :)
The local papers actually showed all the active candidates in the US primary just before Super Tuesday.
Psss- it's "il voto". masculine =)
Only 2 months for someone to catch my spelling error...
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