By MARINA VILLENEUVE Associated Press

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The winner of the ultra-tight 22nd Congressional District race in New York remained unclear Tuesday as a state judge ordered county boards of elections to fix errors made when first counting ballots.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Anthony Brindisi and his Republican challenger, former U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney, are separated by perhaps as few as a dozen votes and remain at odds over about 1,500 disputed affidavit and absentee ballots and several dozen uncounted ballots found recently by Chenango County.

The judge denied Tenney's request to allow counties to declare her the winner in his Tuesday order.

A string of recordkeeping problems has led to confusion over vote totals. The close race has featured counties sending in shifting and, at times, incomplete vote tallies and an issue with critical records on ballot objections being lost when the sticky notes on which they had been written lost their adhesiveness.

"To be clear, there is absolutely no evidence or even an allegation before this court of any fraud on the part of the boards or the campaigns," State Judge Scott DelConte wrote. 

He also pointed to counties that failed to alert voters of fixable issues with their ballots, record candidate's objections to ballots, properly count affidavit ballots and rule on hundreds of ballots that candidates objected to and went uncounted.