4,200 miles away, voting on Italy

Isat at my parents’ dining room table in their Upper East Side apartment last month pondering whether to use my black pen to place a large “X” on either the word “si” or “no.”

I, a dual citizen of Italy and the United States by virtue of the fact that my parents are both Italian immigrants, was voting — as all Italians will Sunday — on a referendum that will dramatically shape the future of a country with a rich history stretching back thousands of years, but a future full of uncertainty.

The referendum is the brainchild of Italy’s current prime minister, the left-leaning Matteo Renzi, who says he needs more authority to cut through red tape and get Italy’s economy out of its deep rut.

If “yes” passes, the country’s Senate will lose a lot of its power and shrink dramatically from its current 315 members to 100. At the same time, the Chamber of Deputies — the equivalent to our House, with 630 members, and currently equal to the Senate when it comes to approving legislation — would have more power and make it easier to pass laws. It would also make it easier for the government in power, in this case Renzi, to push its agenda.

Makes some sense, if your priority is streamlining an often gridlocked government. Right now, Italy has more than three times the number of senators the United States has, even though it has a population of 61 million people.

But, as always, it’s the layers of politics beneath the surface that define what this vote is all about.

The referendum has become, after Brexit and election of Donald Trump, another chance for the global nationalist and populist wave of recent months to register its fury.

Since Renzi, who supports the European Union, is spearheading these reforms, Italians — and his many political opponents — are using the vote as an up-or-down vote on his two years in office, and as a chance to register yet another blow, perhaps a death blow, to the continental economic union.

Those political opponents include the anti-establishment, populist Five Star Movement and the anti-immigration Northern League. Imagine Bernie Sanders and Trump supporters uniting to defeat a proposal backed by Barack Obama.

There are an estimated 4 million Italian citizens living abroad — mostly in North and South America, Europe and Australia. It may very well be these voters, sending in ballots by mail, who tip the results of the referendum.

Ponder this: Many of the same people who voted for Trump just last month will also cast ballots in this referendum.

How can my American political brain cast a conceivably decisive ballot in another country’s referendum, particularly one that’s hinging on nationalistic pride?

It’s not easy. First you have to accept that Italy is a nation of contradictions. Only in Italy can a referendum that would reform the system be seen as “establishment,” while maintaining the status quo as something akin to change. But in this bizarro-world scenario, that’s exactly what is happening.

Making matters more complex, as the American-born son of Italians, my life has benefited tremendously from globalization. In many ways, it’s defined by internationalism. But at the same time, I have plenty of borrowed Italian pride.

I ultimately checked “no.” Italy’s constitution, I reasoned, was designed this way on purpose. It was meant to give both houses of parliament many of the checks and balances the country did not have under Benito Mussolini. The framers of the constitution had witnessed the rise of fascism and made it so that no one person has too much power. If the reforms were to go through, it would give Renzi — and prime ministers that follow — a lot of power.

Second, Italy’s rate of unemployment is around 12%, but nearly twice that in the south, where most of my family lives.

Many of my aunts, uncles and cousins in Naples have struggled with this scourge and have often been left scrambling to make ends meet. Some of them would be more than happy to see Renzi go.

So I just cast a vote that could result in another shockwave in a year of populist and nationalist earthquakes. I did it not because I’m a populist or a nationalist or because I want to kill the European Union, but because I’m channeling another set of political fears and frustrations.

So it goes. Or, as we say in Italian, E andata così adanta.