Pope Leo Vows to Vote in Every Primary in America, Then Opens Polling Station in Vatican Gardens
The Holy See announces the Pontiff will cast his ballot at a parish-sized polling booth set up beside the Sistine Chapel, and that the entire Curia has been enrolled to vote in every primary held since 2008.
Pope Leo XIV has ordered that every election in the United States be held inside the Vatican, after the Holy See announced that the pontiff intends to vote in each of the country's primaries, beginning with the next cycle, and in person. The Secretariat of State has already leased a disused railway siding in the Vatican Gardens for the purpose and installed four hundred polling booths along the old track bed.
Officials said the decision followed a review of the pontiff's voting record, which lists him as a registered voter in New Lenox, Illinois. A spokesman for the Apostolic Palace said the Pope considered the postal ballot insufficiently solemn. «A vote cast by letter is a vote the Holy Father has not witnessed being counted,» the spokesman said. «He wishes to see every paper handled by hand.»
The arrangement has transformed daily life inside the walls. The Swiss Guard has been retrained as election marshals and now patrols the booths in full dress uniform, and the Vatican pharmacy has been converted into a counting room, staffed by monks who have been taught to tally ballots in both major parties' colours. Cardinals not yet assigned to a primary have been informally rostered by Illinois county, and a seminar on the Electoral College has been added to the Lenten timetable.
Preparations for the next cycle are already under way. The Governorate has ordered forty tonnes of white marble to pave the access road to the siding, and Vatican Radio has begun broadcasting turnout figures every hour, on the hour, from a chair the Pope is said to have set aside for the purpose.
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