The Rome center-left primaries organizing committee said Wednesday it is double-checking whether errors were made in counting blank ballots.
The official count after the Sunday vote was of 43,607 valid votes cast, 2,866 blank ballots, 843 void ballots, and one contested ballot. An anonymous member of the national Democratic Party (PD) committee told Il Messaggero paper in an interview that he "inflated the blank and void ballots to increase the turnout". PD primary candidate and MP Roberto Morassut said "if it's true... it was a pointless and damaging mistake".
"Someone alleges a couple thousand blank ballots were added - it's not so," primary winner and Deputy Lower House Speaker Roberto Giachetti said. "A logical motive would have been to fake a bigger turnout, but even a child understands that the difference between 43,000 and 45,000 votes is negligible".
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