The Mexican election tightens

Déjà vu:

The controversy and confusion surrounding Mexico's presidential election deepened Tuesday as electoral officials released new results that further tightened the razor-thin gap between left-of-center candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and front-running conservative Felipe Calderon.

Campaign officials for Lopez Obrador demanded a full recount, insisting that the official preliminary results, which had been released hours after the Sunday voting, were plagued by errors and that their candidate had won the election.

Federal Electoral Institute officials were under mounting public criticism Tuesday for not counting some 2.6 million ballots that they deemed had "inconsistencies" because of conflicting information or blank entries. At a hastily called evening news conference, institute officials finally released these votes, which narrowed Calderon's lead from 1.04 percent to 0.64 percent.

Election officials also noted that the initial count did not include an additional 827,317 ballots that were nullified because of undisclosed errors or approximately 800,000 ballots that did not arrive to counting centers on time.