A single row. In Milan and Padua, the polling stations for the European elections on 8 and 9 June will say goodbye to queues divided by gender. For the first time starting from the 2023 regional elections, the Milanese municipal administration intends to raise awareness of those presiding over the polling station so that they do not distribute voters in two rows, keep the registers close together and proceed to identify people only when their turn arrives.
Discriminating practice
The electoral registers, by law, are divided on the basis of gender and in most cases it happens that presidents follow this criterion to manage the flow of people who go to vote. This is a practice that has been in use for decades but which has been contested for several years because it is discriminatory and harmful towards transgender and non-binary people. For this reason, the decision of the two municipalities to take a step forward. “The idea was born from listening to the territory – Francesca Benciolini, the councilor for registry services of the Municipality of Padua, explained to AGI – there are people who told us that in having to position themselves within the rows in a phase of transition, therefore with documents not yet completed, they felt a feeling of unease so much so that in some cases they gave up voting. So it’s about guaranteeing equal opportunities for everyone, starting with guaranteeing the right to vote.”
see also
Disjoint voting, what to know ahead of the elections and how it works
Elections dedicated to inclusion
The Municipality of Milan has also created some videos to renew the invitation to polling station presidents, scrutineers to welcome electors and voters in an inclusive manner to the polls. In fact, it is the duty of those dedicated to polling operations to ensure that each person, regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion or origin, is allowed to exercise this right in complete serenity. The first contains the indication to polling station presidents to distribute the electors and electors in a single row, rather than dividing them into rows differentiated on the basis of female and male genders. In the second video, however, Giuseppe Arconzo, delegate for accessibility policies of the Municipality of Milan, draws attention to the issue of voting reserved for those voters and electors unable to vote independently and on their right to be assisted in the booth by a companion. Councilor Benciolini also spoke on the topic of inclusion and accessibility: “It’s attention, at no cost, which changes nothing in concrete terms but which makes the difference – she continued – exactly like the fact that in all the polling stations there there must be at least one booth of the right height for people with wheelchairs, that blind people can be accompanied into the booth, and that all seats are accessible and without stairs. These are all measures to ensure that the vote can be exercised in complete freedom and serenity.”
