A direct clash between the government and the Capitol took place after the delays caused yesterday by the failure of Rome’s electoral machinery due to a bug in the computer system. And also by inconsistencies in 78 sections that will force a recount. A “shameful situation” for minister Guido Crosetto with Italy “the only nation in Europe not to have identified the number of elected parliamentarians”.
The reply from the Campidoglio was clear: “the count is complete, the minister should inform himself”. Indeed, they later specified from Palazzo Senatorio, “there was no delay or anomaly in the transmission of the electoral data for the purposes of the official proclamation of the elected representatives, which will take place within the scheduled time. The only delay, of 12 hours, was caused by the bug , concerned the provisional and no legal indication of the results on the website of the Ministry of the Interior”. This does not mean that Mayor Roberto Gualtieri wants to clarify a case that has put the capital at the center of national attention on a delicate issue: the internal investigation has already been arranged, the responsibilities will be clarified.
Having closed the IT issue, with the insertion of preferences completed late at 11pm yesterday, the impasse now remains in the 78 sections where inconsistencies and errors (more votes from voters or reports delivered blank) will force a recount which, warns the electoral section of the Court, will not be there before Friday. What appears to be inconsistent is not so much the minutes (“all regular”, assures the Municipality), but rather the ‘121 forms’, i.e. “summary forms for recording the list vote” which are irrelevant for the proclamation. Typically the inconsistent ‘121’ are about half but this time, Capitol claims, the bug would not have allowed the polling president to correct the inaccuracies on the spot.
The controversy, however, is very high: “Italy has not yet concluded the counting operations – thundered the Minister of Defense on disorganization of a municipality”. “The minister’s statements are false and out of place”, replied the Rome Councilor for Personnel Policies Andrea Catarci, underlining how “Roma Capitale has completed the insertion of the list votes”, concluding the count yesterday. The problems relating to the results of the missing sections, in fact, would have been caused by errors during the manual transcription of the votes, without however affecting the counting operations.
“The inconsistent reports – added Catarci – do not in any way slow down the procedures of the court, which has regularly started all the operations. If the counting had not been concluded, as Crosetto claimed, the electoral office of the court of Rome would not have would be seated to recount the ballots.”
Already yesterday, Catarci had reiterated the correct conclusion of the counting operations and the subsequent entry of data on preferences into the digital system, to be transmitted to the Interior Ministry. But the Ministry of the Interior did not include those data, so much so that on the Eligendo website it is specified that the distribution of seats on the platform is to be considered “unofficial and provisional also due to the lack of results from 78 sections of Constituency III (these are the missing sections of Rome, ed.), of the list votes of a section of a municipality of the IV District and of the preference votes of the same municipality (this is Campobasso, ed.) the counting of these sections will be carried out by the competent provincial electoral offices”. The verdict is also in the balance for the municipal elections of Campobasso and Lecce where various inconveniences led to the recount of the ballots.
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