Short Story 1: Election Day

13 and 14th April: election day in Italy. In Roma the turnout is less than national average, but still high, 73%. Maybe this is because election in Roma are hard work: on top of Senate and Camera (the lower house), the Romani have to vote for the provincial and town elections. Poll stations are hosted in schools This set of pictures capture some of the activity around the schools of Municipio XVII (the area of Roma north of St Peter).

The slideshows contains my first broad selection of pictures from election day.

Some additional notes to this essay:

1) My original plan was to take a picture of Roberto Tavani (the candidate I followed during his campaign) as he voted, but I could not get the necessary authorization which is only given to the press. So the story of the candidate lack this important moment. On top of this, it was not possible to engage much with Roberto on the day as he was working as a polling officer, and therefore on duty.

2) Even if I had the authorization to take the pic, I still would have had to persuade Roberto to vote late in the day (which is against his usual electoral routine!). I had to vote in Torino and then get back to Roma by the afternoon.

3) It is not possible to get pictures of election officers and voters in action: taking pics of voting boots is forbidden. Basically one can only take pics of what happens in school corridors, not in the classrooms where the voting happens. Taking pictures of voting booths (or simply carrying in the voting boot a mobile phone with a camera) is a crime sanctioned with 300 to 1000 Euro. One could even be arrested, from 3 to 6 months. Not worth risking!! The reason for this is to limit vote selling.

4) I had hoped to take more pictures of people giving a final look at the electoral posters, with symbols and names of candidates (which are a bit of a rip off by the way as in Italy we now have no way to chose the candidates we vote, as we used to). In Torino these posters are put outside the schools, so it is really easy to take pics from the streets. In Roma, however, posters are put inside the school (bad surprise!), so it is more challenging to intrude the space and take pictures of them.

5) I tried my luck anyway and asked to police officers guarding the voting stations if I could take some pictures. Some of them were kind and let me do it, and I was quite quick and covert in doing it. Despite this I had to face a couple of voters who did not want me to take pics of the corridors., even if I always tried not to single out individuals. The police officers were kind enough to take my side . After that they commented, sadly, that it was as if people were ashamed to vote… The plus point of this discussion is that some other people who overheard the conversation said that would not oppose a pic of them and let me take it.

6) It was very difficult to give a sense of a story, this essay is more of a setting… The story of voting day I had in mind would culminate in the street vigil/celebrations for the results. But it was soon quite clear that the left - who would usually meet at Piazza del Popolo - was going to be badly defeated and no one showed up. there. The people from the right really did not have a celebration spot to visit. I should have taken a pic of a tv set instead!