Il Giornale.it Alessandra Benignetti
From the Miami Comites a hundred reports on delays and non-delivery of envelopes for referendums on justice. And the consulate justifies itself: “Difficult to find the paper.”
Packages delivered days late or never arrived at their destination. There could be thousands of compatriots living abroad who could not vote for the referendums on justice. One of the complaints comes from the United States and in particular from the Committee of Italians Abroad (Comites) in Miami, the second largest in the U.S. after the one in New York. President Andrea Di Giuseppe’s phone in recent days has been stormed by dozens of Italians in Florida and other southeastern states who have not received their ballots, or have had them delivered only days before the 4 p.m. June 9 deadline for return. “The complaints I have received so far will be at least a hundred,” the entrepreneur who has been transplanted to the States for years tells us over the phone. And that is only in the Southeast.
Consulates should have mailed the envelopes by May 25 to allow voters to reflect for a few days, fill out the ballots, and send them back to the diplomatic representative’s office. Di Giuseppe, however, received his just a few days ago. Mrs. Anna, on the other hand, a resident of Orlando, did not have her ballots delivered until June 7. She hastened to hand them back to the letter carrier, but the likelihood of them reaching the Miami consulate on time is very low. Same for an entire family in Naples, Collier County. “Shipping to Florida takes at least two days, and delivery is usually after five o’clock in the afternoon,” Pasquale Cetera, adviser to the Miami Comites, tells the Giornale. He never received his envelope. “The same goes for my wife and son and at least six other Italians I know here in town,” he tells us.
“I am very sorry that I could not vote,” he adds, “both because this is an issue, that of justice, that is close to my heart and because I believe strongly in democracy. About the problem of delays in the delivery of envelopes containing ballots had been discussed as early as last May 31 in a webinar organized by the very same Comites with the consul general in Miami, Cristiano Musillo, who justified the slowdowns by blaming them on the long weekend for Memorial Day, but also on difficulties due to the “extreme scarcity of paper” and finding “manpower” to envelope the approximately 360,000 envelopes to be mailed. On more than one occasion, moreover, the consul had paused to mention that for repeal referendums there is also “the possibility of not casting a vote, to express dissent indirectly.”
The paradox, in the end, was that for many people voting was not possible willy-nilly. “Those of the consulate seems to me to be laughable reasons,” Cetera comments, “the truth is that we could have organized early and better. “The problem, rather,” he adds, “is one of lack of political will: according to a study by the General Council of Italians Abroad, to enable our compatriots to vote would have required 42 million euros, while the Foreign Ministry has allocated about half that amount. For President Di Giuseppe, too, the causes of the misunderstandings must be sought upstream: “The consulate tries to do what it can with the resources it has, the problem is at the Farnesina and in general in the very little consideration for Italians around the world. The right to vote is one of the most important rights and there is an Italy outside Italy that every time risks not being able to exercise it properly.”
Also denouncing the difficulties for Italians voting across the border is Cgie representative Vincenzo Arcobelli, president of the Tricolore Committee for Italians Worldwide, who reports “reports from all over the globe on the partial distribution coverage of envelopes and widespread delays” and calls for the establishment of a parliamentary committee of investigation to shed light on the matter.
