A party card arrived in the post even though its recipient says she never applied. Elsewhere, hundreds of supposed members were tied to a single flat. The cases reported inside Futuro Nazionale, Roberto Vannacci’s party, raise a basic question about its claim to have 150,000 supporters: how many people knowingly chose to join?
Il Fatto Quotidiano reported the cases on 18 October 2026, highlighting anomalies in party membership records in Apulia and Civitanova Marche. They do not establish the scale of any wider problem, but they expose how a weak local registration system could turn questionable entries into an impressive-looking political statistic.
A party card without an application
In Apulia, a 20-year-old Italian woman reportedly went to law enforcement after receiving a Futuro Nazionale membership card despite not submitting an application to join. Her account is an allegation to be examined, rather than a final official finding. But the practical consequence is clear: a person can be presented in a party’s records as a member without having made that choice.
That matters because membership lists do more than record contact details. They can be used to establish local committees, support internal appointments and demonstrate a party’s reach. An unauthorised or inaccurate entry therefore carries political weight as soon as it is added to the total.
The second case is more striking for its numbers. In Civitanova Marche, 226 party members were reportedly linked to one address. An expanded list containing 603 names placed about 90 per cent of them in the same flat.
There are several possible explanations for such a concentration, including a data-entry mistake, a collective registration process, outdated details or the use of an address without adequate checking. The figures alone do not show that every name was fictitious. They do, however, make the provenance of the list and the consent of the people on it central questions.
How a local committee can be built
Futuro Nazionale’s internal rules may help explain why questionable records could spread through local structures. Under the arrangement described, opening a local committee requires the signatures of just 10 people and the appointment of one leader.
A low threshold can help a young party establish a presence quickly. It also places a heavy burden on verification. The identities of signatories, their willingness to join and the accuracy of their addresses all need to be checked if a committee is to represent a real group of supporters rather than a paper structure.
Once a committee exists, a larger list can confer influence on its organisers. It may strengthen their position in internal decisions and make the party appear more deeply rooted in a town or region. The reported cases do not demonstrate that local officials deliberately used inaccurate lists for career advancement or factional disputes. They do show how the rules could create an incentive to present larger numbers than the active membership would justify.
This is why the dispute is not confined to one party card or one anomalous address. If the same people are counted without their consent, or if large groups are recorded at locations that cannot plausibly account for them, the headline figure of 150,000 becomes difficult to interpret. It may include active members, occasional supporters, names collected for an organisational exercise and straightforward administrative errors.
Il Fatto Quotidiano’s report on the party cards and registration records has placed the issue in public view. The unresolved question for Futuro Nazionale is whether it can show how membership is confirmed, how disputed entries are removed and why hundreds of names were attached to the same home. Until those points are clear, the party’s claimed size remains a measure of its paperwork rather than a reliable measure of its support.
Read the report in Il Fatto Quotidiano.
