Eric Adams maintains a meager lead in the New York City mayoral contest after reviewing the count

A revised count of New York City mayoral ballots released Wednesday showed Kathryn Garcia even closer to leader Eric Adams than a Tuesday balance sheet that pushed the race to chaos.

The latest tab gave Adams, a retired police captain and president of the city of Brooklyn, 51.1% of the vote, with Garcia, the former head of the sanitation department, at 48.9%, unchanged with respect to the previous count.

Still, the margin among Democratic candidates fell from 15,908 votes to 14,755 votes, with approximately 124,000 absentee ballots yet to be counted.

Third-place candidate Maya Wiley said the election was “still open” and demanded that all votes be counted.

The city’s electoral board released the count on Wednesday evening with apologies after its extraordinary failure a day earlier led to the erroneous inclusion of a total of 135,000 ballots of a system test. He mistake it provoked the indignation of the candidates and the mockery of the New York residents.

The council, oblivious to controversy and criticism, blamed the “human error” on the failure.

Elections are the first in which the city uses the ballot by classified election, giving each voter the option to include up to five candidates, in order of preference, on the ballot. Losing candidates are eliminated in successive rounds, with their votes reallocated until only two finalists remain.

“The error in yesterday’s classified election voting reports was unacceptable and we apologize to voters and campaigns for the confusion,” said two board members, President Frederic Umane and Secretary Miguelina Camilo. “Let’s make it clear: [ranked choice voting] it was not the problem, but a human error that could have been avoided ”.

The board insisted that new review layers had been introduced and that it could report with “certainty” that the last tabulation was accurate.

Garcia, a pragmatist whose campaign experienced a belated increase, said: “While we remain confident on our path to victory, we take nothing for granted and encourage everyone to wait patiently for more than 124,000 to be counted. ballots for absence and are included in the election classified tabulation of votes “.

It was Adams ’campaign that discovered Tuesday night that more than 100,000 additional votes appeared to have been added to the count since election night a week earlier.

His campaign noted Wednesday that it had advanced election day and added: “There are still votes for absence that we believe are favorable to Eric – and we are confident that we will be the final election of New Yorkers when each vote is counted.” ”

Adams seemed to have one lead commander election night, with 31.8% of voters classifying it as their first choice. He was dragged by Wiley, a former mayor’s lawyer Bill de Blasio and the leading progressive candidate, with 22.2 percent. Garcia was third with 19.3%.

But Garcia benefited when the polls went through the classified election process. He outscored Wiley by just 347 votes after businessman Andrew Yang was eliminated from the race and his ballots were redistributed. Wiley’s elimination gave Garcia another boost.

Elections are considered the most consistent in a generation for New York while trying to recover from a pandemic that has killed more than 33,000 residents, leveled small businesses and ravaged the city’s social fabric.

It is also being watched beyond America’s largest city as part of the broader struggle between the moderate establishment of the Democratic Party and a rising progressive wing.

The Democratic candidate who wins the primaries is almost certain to prevail in the November general election, given the overwhelming number of Democratic voters in the city.