Antonia Pes from Viddalba also voted in 1946, in a Gallura farmhouse transformed into a mobile polling station. Today, Antonia is 103 years old and has never stopped going to the polls: "Because voting is a duty," she states peremptorily. The video of the meeting with the centenarian, with her firsthand testimony, was screened this evening at the Palazzo Ducale during the Sassari City Council's formal session to celebrate 80 years since women were allowed to vote.
Prime Minister Mario Pingerna opened the proceedings. A short film by the Istituto Luce on the first universal suffrage elections was also shown. Among the speakers in the chamber were Prefect Carla Di Quattro and Sassari's first and only mayor, Anna Sanna, who, as a member of Parliament, also supported and promoted laws on women's employment, maternity leave, and work-life balance.
Carla Bassu, a constitutional scholar and professor of comparative public law at the University of Sassari, traced the legislative process from Law No. 26 of February 2, 1945, which extended the right to vote to women at age 21, and continued with the Constituent Assembly and the Constitution. On June 2, 1946, 21 women were elected to the Constituent Assembly, representing 3.7% of the entire 558-member Assembly. The end of the monarchy was decreed by 54.3% of the women and men who voted for the republic, a margin of just two million votes in favor of the latter.
After a musical interlude with students from the Azuni music high school, the session closed with a speech by Mayor Giuseppe Mascia.
