Rome ? Italy’s hotly disputed election is fast turning into a rerun of the Florida 2000 fiasco, with the discovery of a pile of ballots dumped in the garbage on the outskirts of Rome and the politicians continuing to bicker over who won the photo-finish poll.

Rome’s authorities immediately ordered an inquiry into the circumstances under which 18 ballot boxes were found by a passerby stacked beside municipal garbage cans near a school that had served as a polling station.

They also said the 608 valid, marked ballots, contained in boxes clearly inscribed with the words “Ministry of Interior,” would not have changed the election result and had probably been mistaken by the school’s cleaners for trash.

Rome Procurator Giovanni Ferrara told reporters the discarded votes had already been included in the official vote count and would therefore have no effect on the still uncertain outcome of the election, which left-of-center leader Romano Prodi says he won by a wafer-thin margin of 0.6 percent.

“No evidence has emerged that there was an intentional act to alter the election results,” he said.

A recount of the trashed ballots, however, found that the tally for the center-right coalition led by incumbent Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is alleging widespread fraud, had been undercounted by one vote, according to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

“It is an issue of immense gravity,” Rome’s mayor, Walter Veltroni, told the newspaper. “It’s quite impossible for voting slips to turn up in the garbage … and we need to establish who is guilty of this.”

With Prodi ahead by just 25,000 votes out of more than 38 million cast, Berlusconi’s camp is demanding a review of the result, insisting that every vote counts.

“There have been countless swindles all over Italy. I am confident that the result will be overturned,” Berlusconi told reporters outside his Rome headquarters. “You are not rid of me yet!”

“Berlusconi is swindling himself,” responded Prodi, addressing a victory rally in Bologna. “We have won … and Berlusconi must go home.”