Italy: E-voting pilot kicks off in Salento | ZDNet

You’d expect to hear about Salento in a travel blog, inviting you to explore the villages and secluded white sand beaches of this Italian gem. But there’s more to the region than scenery: it’s the home of one of Italy’s first major experiments with e-voting. First, the trivia. Martignano is the one of the region’s smallest towns, situated in an area known as the Grecia Salentina, a language enclave of ten municipalities where griko is spoken, a language originating from ancient greek (Salento was once part of the Magna Grecia). Small yet culturally lively, Martignano still has one of the best broadband infrastructures in Italy. Melpignano is another town in the Grecia Salentina, and also uses griko. Onto the politics: smaller towns and municipalities in Italy have recently been asked to cast their votes as part of an “advisory referendum” on the question of whether to join up with other towns with up to 5,000 citizens. It’s a part of an ongoing countrywide bid to try to reduce public spending by cutting the number of small municipalities and provinces and the amount of administration that goes with them.
The citizens of Martignano and Melpignano were asked to cast their ballot earlier this month, but they weren’t asked to do so using the usual school desks and wooden screens that typically make up impromptu polling stations in Italy. Instead, the towns’ voters were to do their bit for democracy through a touchscreen ballot box.
This first experiment of e-voting was possible due to the interest and funding of Italy’s Ministry of Interior, but also thanks to the work LeG staff (UniSalento e-Government Laboratory) and its deputy director, Professor Marco Mancarella. Mancarella is a legal consultant in digital law and has studied e-voting experiments held in Mexico, in the Jalisco region, where the e-ballot box was developed.
Full Article: Italy kicks off all e-voting pilot in Salento | ZDNet.