Note (Back) — Chapter XX
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414. The Franchise To-day.—The Italian voter to-day must possess the following qualifications: (1) Italian citizenship; (2) age of twenty-one, or over; (3) ability to read and write; and (4) successful passage of examinations in the subjects comprised in the course of compulsory elementary education. The last-mentioned qualification is not, however, required of officials, graduates of colleges, professional men, persons who have served two years in the army, citizens who pay a direct tax annually of not less than nineteen lire eighty centesimi, those who pay an agricultural rental of 500 lire, those who pay house rent of from 150 lire in communes of 2,500 people to 400 lire in communes of over 150,000, and certain less important classes. So serious at all times has seemed the menace of illiteracy in Italy that the establishment of manhood suffrage has but rarely been proposed. Under the existing system the extension of education carries with it automatically the expansion of the franchise, though the obstacles to universal education are still so formidable that the democratizing of the state proceeds but slowly.[551] In 1904 the number of enrolled electors was 2,541,327—29 per cent of the male population over twenty-one years of age, and 7.67 per cent of the total population—exclusive of 26,056 electors temporarily disfranchised by reason of being engaged in active military service. At the elections of November, 1904, the number of qualified electors who voted was 1,593,886, or but 62.7 per cent of those who possessed the privilege. The proportion of registered electors who actually vote is kept down by the prosaic character of Italian electoral campaigns, by the influence of the papal Non Expedite,[552] and, most of all, by the habitual indifference of citizens, who, if the truth be told, for the most part have never displayed an insatiable yearning for the possession of the voting privilege. With the exception of the Socialists, no party has a clear-cut, continuous programme; none, save again the socialists, attempts systematically to arouse the voters at election time.