---
title: "Rome Rewrites the Ballot: Meloni’s Majority Prize Returns From an Old Grave"
description: "Parliament has approved, by secret ballot, a law giving bonus seats to any coalition above 42 percent — critics see power locked in"
author: "Jan Sokol"
published: 2026-10-08T12:10:32Z
modified: 2026-10-08T16:49:30Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/rome-rewrites-the-ballot-meloni-s-majority-prize-returns-fro-ad4445
language: en
tags: ["politics", "meloni", "elections", "democracy", "coalition", "europe"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Rome Rewrites the Ballot: Meloni’s Majority Prize Returns From an Old Grave

*Parliament has approved, by secret ballot, a law giving bonus seats to any coalition above 42 percent — critics see power locked in*

By Jan Sokol · October 8, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/rome-rewrites-the-ballot-meloni-s-majority-prize-returns-fro-ad4445

## In brief

- Italy’s parliament voted Thursday on Meloni’s law granting bonus seats to a winner above 42% of the vote
- The lower house approved it 227–164 in a secret ballot, giving a 105-seat bonus across both chambers
- Courts struck down earlier majority bonuses: the 2005 Porcellum in 2013 and Renzi’s Italicum in 2017
- Opposition parties vow a court challenge, calling the bonus a distortion of representation

ROME — Every nation keeps certain laws in a drawer like old medicines: taken once, found bitter, put away — and then, years later, prescribed again under a new name. Italy’s medicine is the majority bonus, and on Thursday its parliament voted to take it again. [Al Jazeera reported](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/8/italian-law-to-give-election-winners-bonus-seats-why-thats-controversial) ahead of the vote that the law, proposed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, would award extra seats to any party or coalition obtaining more than 42 percent of the vote in both chambers, guaranteeing it a governing majority.

The vote, when it came, was secret — a ballot without signatures, in which deputies answer only to themselves and their whips. By late morning the count was done: the lower house approved the reform by 227 votes to 164, [according to US News](https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-10-08/italys-meloni-secures-final-approval-for-contested-electoral-reform), completing its passage. The reform replaces the current mixed system with a fully proportional one, sweetened by a prize: a bonus of 70 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 35 in the Senate — 105 in all — for any alliance reaching the 42 percent threshold in both houses, [the New York Times reported](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/08/world/europe/italy-election-law-bonus.html).

For half a century, a stable majority was the holy water every Roman government claimed to seek, and Italy has tried this ritual before. In 2005 Silvio Berlusconi’s coalition passed the law Italians darkly christened the *Porcellum*, with a majority prize attached; the Constitutional Court struck that prize down in 2013 for distorting the vote without a minimum threshold. Matteo Renzi tried again in 2015 with his *Italicum*, prize included, and the court invalidated that too in 2017 — a pedigree of failure [recounted in earlier coverage of the reform battles](https://www.politico.eu/article/paolo-gentiloni-italy-electoral-law-puts-government-at-risk-this-one-and-the-next/). The new law’s authors will note their improvement: unlike the old unlimited bonus, this one is claimed only above a high, fixed share of the vote — the very flaw the court condemned in 2013.

The opposition sees the matter differently, and says so in the language of siege. Critics argue the bonus is engineered to boost Meloni’s chances of holding power beyond the next election, handing a winning coalition — hers, they suspect — an outsized grip on parliament that the raw vote would not confer. The bill was pushed through in a secret ballot, denying the public the sight of who voted how, and opposition parties have already vowed to challenge the law in court, arguing that rewarding 42 percent of the ballots with a guaranteed majority distorts the representation Italians actually cast, [the Guardian reported](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/08/giorgia-meloni-italy-wins-bonus-seat-electoral-reform-vote).

There is an old observation about parliaments: the faction that controls the rules today writes them for tomorrow, and discovers their dangers only when it loses. The bonus is a machine with two settings — it disciplines a fragmented party system into governability, and it converts two voters in five into a majority of the seats. Both are true at once, which is why the argument never dies in Italy; it only changes governments.

What happens next belongs now to the judges. The Constitutional Court has buried this law twice under other names, and the opposition means to send it there a third time — 105 seats, a 42 percent key, and a secret ballot behind it, waiting to learn whether in Rome the third prescription is the charm.