In Italy, the voter list is no longer divided by gender but into two alphabetical intervals, one from A to L and one from M to Z. This means that those who want to vote no longer need to indicate their gender on their identity cards. This is an important change, requested for some time to protect the privacy of people who do not identify as male or female, or who identify as a gender other than the registered gender (e.g. because they have started the gender transition process but do not yet have their documents updated, or for other reasons they have not requested a gender change on their documents).
The regulations introducing this change have been in force since May, as confirmed by the Ministry of the Interior, but until now there has been no news about this in the newspapers and therefore not much has been reported about it: partly because there is technical time to change the registers and partly because at that time election opportunities were very few and mostly local.
The transition from gender distinctions to alphabetical distinctions became effective in regional elections this fall in Calabria, Tuscany and Marche. This must also be done in the regional elections which will be held on Sunday 23 and Monday 24 November in Campania, Puglia and Veneto, considering that this change is explicitly mentioned in the instructions for organizing voting in these three regions. The Post has confirmed that several polling station chairs have been notified of the new list.
Until a few months ago, voter lists (i.e. lists created by the Ministry of Home Affairs containing the names of citizens entitled to vote) were divided into male and female lists, based on the gender written on the document. In most polling stations, there are two supervisory officers registering people who will vote: one filling in the men’s list and the other filling in the women’s list.
Therefore, in many cases, voters are split into two lines based on these criteria, forcing some trans or non-binary people to effectively come out. But now, those who will vote will only be divided based on alphabetical brackets that include their surnames.
This change was realized by changes to law number 27 of 2025 which is informally called the election decision. A similar thing also happened when the government introduced digital voting for non-residents in the referendum on June 8 and 9. With this decision, the rule requiring married or widowed women to also include their husband’s last name on the voter list was also abolished. In reality, this indication was avoided in some cases, but has now been officially removed.
The decree was turned into law in May, but it was impossible to update the list in time for local elections the same month and for the referendum in June. This amendment was actually carried out after the government and the Ministry of Home Affairs had started preparing the list and documents required for the elections, while still using the criteria for division based on gender.
However, some municipalities had already organized themselves even before the national law was approved, to ensure that voting was less discriminatory. The Municipality of Milan, for example, has released several times (including at the June referendum) several videos suggesting that polling station chairmen arrange voters and electors in one row, keeping the two lists close together and identifying people only after their turn has come.
