ITALIANS go to the polls next month faced with voting slips measuring up to 1.5m across.

Standing proud at an average width of 65cm, the voting cards will be broader than an open copy of The Times and only slightly less high. Giuseppe Pisanu, the Interior Minister, admitted that in areas where many parties are standing they could reach 1½.

"I know some people have been ironic about this but I would like to point out that in the United States they are even longer," he said at a presentation press conference, emphasising that the size was the result of a new electoral law.

An electoral reform was pushed through parliament by Silvio Berlusconi’s allies recently in an alleged bid to make life harder for the opposition. By embracing proportional representation, the law is said to have encouraged a proliferation of small parties.

"It’s like a bed sheet," opposition leader Romano Prodi said as he unfurled a facsimile of the new card on television this week. "It’s the result of this disastrous electoral law and it should be displayed in all Italian homes."

Massimo D’Alema, chairman of the largest opposition party, the Democratic Left, has made poking fun at the new yellow and pink slips a regular act at recent rallies. He gives mock instructions to voters to help them to cope when they enter voting booths.

"They’re hoping you’ll get confused. But on the bed sheet there will be symbols that mean Prodi and others for Berlusconi. If you want things to change, choose the Prodi zone: this is a map to find treasure with."

The Government is not amused. "I don’t think that was one of D’Alema’s best jokes," Gianfranco Fini, the Deputy Prime Minister, said. He admitted, however, that the new system had pushed up the number of parties.

In order to cope with the number of symbols that have to go on the slips, authorities have done away with the old system of listing them vertically. With 48 slates on offer, when the voter opened the slip, the bottom of the list would have dangled somewhere near the floor.

Now the symbols are displayed horizontally to give an "immediate global view" of all parties, Pisanu said. Perhaps fearing polling booth fatigue, he also pointed out that a vertical listing would have favoured parties whose symbols appeared at the top, and hence within easy reach.

"This is a technical correction of evident value," he added.