Little Voting Book

About a year ago I got in contact with the Italian Consulate to renew my ID card. I filled in all the leventy seventy forms and attached four passport photos to it and sent my expired ID card to the consulate in London. I also filled in a form to register myself in Aire, meaning that I live outside Italy. I think I did this years and years ago but just in case I sent the form off again anyway. I never did get my ID card renewed because of all the hassle of going into london to do it. Why it couldnt be done like a driving licence where you send it in the post and a new one arrives a few weeks later I have no idea. As far as I am aware you can apply for a british Passport by filling in forms and posting them off. But Italy will always be Italy!

Anyway...My Aire registration was successful because come May this year I was receiving loads and loads of voting paraphernalia. It just kept coming and coming and coming... Even advertising leaflets. I didn't understand the letters, the referendums, the policies...But i did like the look of some of the documents. Everything in Italy looks official. Some of the papers had sticky labels and stamps on them and were all different colours. So I kept them all and made this:

This is my little voting book made out of all the voting papers that were sent to me. It ha a lot of interesting pages because I tore the mail up so that the book is between A6 and A7 in size.

I bound the book without spine tapes so stitched the spine in a slightly different way. I like the way it turned out. Considering it was pure trial and error I think aesthetically it works. I stuck to the same pattern of stitching so the spine is uniformly bound.

My favorite page in the book is this one. It is the only full size page that hasn't been torn from a bigger bit of paper. I modeled the whole book around this postcard. I love all the stamps on it in the different coloured inks...they add something interesting to the layout. It is unplanned and freely placed by a machine or person who had no intention of making it look good.

The only time I have ever voted was about five years ago in Italy and I had no idea what I was voting for. I ticked the box with the most attractive logo next to it..exactly how I pick my wine, by their labels. On afterthought I realise that I could be voting for the Fascist party so i thought that this was a more fitting way to exercise my vote.