88% of the 61,562 polling stations located on the peninsula are located inside school buildings. And about 75% of the buildings housing one or more seats are buildings intended for teaching purposes. This is highlighted by a dossier for beraking latest news of the Centro Studi Local Entities (CSEL), based on data, updated to 2021, from the Ministry of the Interior.
Two million contributions to find extracurricular locations
To try to reverse this trend and push municipalities to transfer their polling stations to alternative locations to schools (such as sports halls for example), last year the government attempted the targeted funding card. Article 23-bis of the Sostegni decree (Legislative Decree 41/2021) has allocated 2 million euros, to be translated into contributions for the Municipalities that would have identified, by 15 July 2021, extra-curricular seats to be allocated to the functioning of the polling stations in occasion of the administrative 2021.
Only 1% of local administrations joined
As emerges from the Csel dossier, this measure has not met with great success on the national territory. Only 117 Italian local administrations took this opportunity, just over 1% of the total. The region in which the highest number of Municipalities that have committed themselves to this has been registered is Calabria, with 25 Municipalities benefiting from the contributions. Followed by Veneto with 21, Lombardy and Piedmont with 13, Emilia Romagna and Friuli Venezia Giulia with 9 and Lazio with 7 entities. On equal merit also Campania and Tuscany, with 5 Municipalities each, followed by Marche (3), Umbria and Abruzzo (2) and Liguria, Puglia and Basilicata, all at one point.
However 510 seats were transferred
This small number of adhesions has however produced – Csel remarks – the transfer of 510 seats, guaranteeing the continuity of the presence in the classroom for over 30,000 students.