“That night of dirty wind”…

So what if the votes aren’t counted right? Who loses? Just the candidate, the “sore loser” right? Or somebody else?

‘I, Excellency, voted “no”. “No”, a hundred times “no”. I know what you told me: necessity, unity, expediency. You may be right; I know nothing of politics. Such things I leave to others. But Ciccio Tumeo is honest, poor though he may be, with his trousers in holes’ (and he slapped the carefully mended patches on the buttocks of his shooting breeches) ‘and I don’t forget favours done me! Those swines in the Town Hall just swallowed up my opinion, chewed it and then spat it out transformed as they wanted. I said black and they made me say white. The one time when I could say what I thought that bloodsucker Sedara went and annulled it, behaved as if I’d never existed, as If I never meant a thing, me, Francesco Tumeo La Manna son of the late Leonardo, organist of the Mother Church at Donnafugata, a better man than he is! To think I’d even dedicated to him a mazurka composed by me at the birth of that…’ (he bit a finger to rein himself in) ‘that mincing daughter of his!’

At this point calm descended on Don Fabrizio, who had finally solved the enigma; now he knew who had been killed at Donnafugata, at a hundred other places, in the course of that night of dirty wind: a new-born babe: good faith; just the very child who should have been cared for most, whose strengthening would have justified all the silly vandalisms. Don Ciccio’s negative vote, fifty similar votes at Donnafugata, a hundred thousand ‘no’s’ in the whole Kingdom, would have had no effect on the result, have made it, in fact, if anything more significant; and this maiming of souls would have been avoided. Six months before they used to hear a rough despotic voice saying: ‘Do what I say or you’re for it!’ Now there was already an impression of such a threat being replaced by a money-lender’s soapy tones: ‘But you signed it yourself, didn’t you? Can’t you see? It’s quite clear. You must do as we say, for here are the IOU’s; your will is identical with mine.’

Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa, The Leopard

You must do as we say, for here are the IOU’s; your will is identical with mine.

Perhaps Don Ciccio was wrong to oppose the unification of Sicily and Italy in the 1860 referendum. Perhaps the need to appear united was justified in the short run. In the long run… without an honest ballot, will there be honest men like Don Ciccio.

The fictional Don Ciccio, in some ways was vindicated.  Unification with the wealthier north — like a certain trade agreement (never ratified by any referendum, fixed or otherwise) that tied two wealthy northern states to a less wealthy southern one — had a disastrous effect on Sicily, leading to a collapse in the agricultural economy, massive emigration, entrenched criminal “cartels” and… a loss of faith in democracy.