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What began as detected voting irregularities in several areas around the Basque Country, has now become a state-wide controversy. Discrepancies were originally detected in 24 councils in Alava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa, starting in the town of Amezketa where 113 votes intended for the left-wing Basque party Iniciativa Internacional (II) were instead attributed to communist party POSI.

II condemned the vote-counting in the Basque Country as "rigged"&' || 'nbsp; but since then vote-counting in many areas of Spain has come under scrutiny, most notably in the Valencian constituency of Beneixida, represented by the leading Socialist (PSOE) party''s vice-president María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, which did not register a single PSOE vote.

The Delegation of Valencia have assured that their electoral board is above reproach and that the "error" occured during the transmission of data to the Central Office of Data Collection, where the votes were also attributed to the communist POSI party.

The apparent error may be rectified on Wednesday when the various provincial electoral boards meet to recount the emigrant vote.

Possible incongruities have also been reported in Catalonia, namely the marked increase in the number of "white" votes which, according to the count, were six times more than previously registered. In this case, the matter will be more difficult to settle since blank votes (votes which are counted but not attributed to any party) are destroyed.

Parties such as Iniciativa Internacionalista and UPyD also reported the absence of their ballot papers at certain polling stations.

As regards the Basque Country, Interior Ministry figures registered 115,911 votes to the conservative PP and 115, 281 to Iniciative Internacional, while if the discrepancies are confirmed II''s votes will exceed those of the PP making II the third most important party in the territory.

Speaking with ETB, II declared that in the whole of Spain 57,000 invalid votes and 100,000 white votes were registered "without reasonable explanation" leading them to conclude that the counts were fixed. They have announced there intention to continue working to obtain more information about the situation and will use the next few days to decide what legal action to take.