## Facts

- In the Autonomous Region of Friuli‑Venezia Giulia, a regional election law (Regional Law 9 March 1995, no. 14) regulated municipal elections.
- For municipalities with up to 15,000 inhabitants, where only a single list (or a single connected group of lists) was admitted, the law tied election validity to quorum requirements, including a threshold linked to the number of electors entered on the electoral lists.
- In December 2003, Friuli‑Venezia Giulia enacted Regional Law 11 December 2003, no. 21, which inserted a provision directing that, when calculating the participation quorum based on registered electors, the count would exclude citizens entered in the register of electors residing abroad.
- The President of the Council of Ministers brought a direct constitutional challenge (principal action) against the 2003 amendment before the Italian Constitutional Court.
- The national government argued that excluding abroad‑registered citizens from the quorum denominator conflicted with Article 48 of the Constitution (personal and equal suffrage) and with relevant competence limits set by the region’s special statute and implementing legislation, because it altered how the electorate was counted for election validity.
- The region defended the amendment as a rule about election mechanics within regional authority over local government, aimed at preventing municipal elections from being repeatedly invalidated in areas with significant emigration.

## Issues

1. Whether Friuli‑Venezia Giulia had legislative authority to regulate how electors are counted for purposes of the participation quorum in certain municipal elections, including by excluding electors registered as residing abroad.
2. Whether excluding abroad‑registered electors from the quorum denominator violates Article 48 of the Italian Constitution by infringing the equality of the vote.
3. Whether the exclusion unlawfully diminishes the effectiveness of the right to vote by treating abstention by abroad‑registered electors as legally irrelevant for quorum purposes.

## Decision

- The Italian Constitutional Court dismissed the challenge and declared the constitutional questions unfounded.
- The Court held that regulating the computation of the participation quorum for municipal elections falls within the region’s competence over the organization of local authorities.
- The Court held that the challenged rule does not violate Article 48 because it concerns a step prior to the casting of ballots and does not alter equal conditions among voters at the moment the vote is expressed.
- The Court rejected the argument that the rule impermissibly “neutralizes” abstention by abroad‑registered electors; it reasoned that abstention is not constitutionally protected as an equivalent expression to voting, given Article 48’s framing of voting as a civic duty.

## Legal Principles

- Equality of the vote under Article 48 protects equal conditions for citizens at the moment of voting; it does not necessarily govern earlier procedural stages such as how a participation quorum denominator is computed.
- A rule excluding a category of registered electors from a quorum calculation can be constitutional where it does not change the weight of ballots actually cast and does not limit access to voting on equal terms.
- In the context of municipal election rules, regional legislative authority over the organization of local government may include setting quorum mechanics for election validity, subject to constitutional guarantees.
- Because voting is characterized in Article 48 as a civic duty, nonparticipation is not treated as a constitutionally protected choice that must have the same legal effect as a vote when determining election validity through quorum rules.

## Conclusion

In Constitutional Case No. 173/2005, the Italian Constitutional Court upheld Friuli‑Venezia Giulia’s amendment excluding electors registered as residing abroad from the participation‑quorum denominator for certain small‑municipality mayoral elections, concluding that the region acted within its powers and that the rule did not breach Article 48’s guarantee of equal suffrage because it did not affect equality at the time ballots are cast and did not give constitutional status to abstention in quorum computations.


Abroad Voters Case, Constitutional Case No. 173/2005 (2005)