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The New Jersey governor’s race is still pending, thanks to the failed vote counting in several counties—including in a key area where dozens of machines were shut down before the vote was counted.

Local election officials said the mistake of a poll worker caused the machines in 56 voting districts in Essex County (the second most populous area of ​​the state) to be shut down before their votes were counted.

Such mistakes helped to put the fierce competition between Democratic Governor Phil Murphy and Republican enemy Jack Chatarelli into trouble.

"These machines must be brought back to the warehouse, and the judge will issue an order for us to turn on these machines, retrieve the results and publish these results," County Secretary Christopher Durkin told News 12.

He told the Washington Post on Wednesday that he hopes to announce the results in each region by Thursday night.

"The sooner the better," Dejin said. 

The county voted in the 2020 presidential election with a majority of the Democratic Party.

Murphy has been an easy lead in the polls before Election Day, but at some point on Wednesday, Catarelli narrowed the gap between them to 465 votes across the state.

Durkin said that most of Essex County affected by the machine error is in Newark, Montclair, Maple, East Orange and Irvington. He said that between 10,000 and 15,000 votes are in danger.

At the same time, Andrew Sayegh, the mayor of Paterson City in Pasek County, said that five districts are also facing similar vote counting problems.

Sayegh stated that voting workers were unfamiliar with the county’s new voting machines, which caused them to accidentally lock these devices before counting votes.

Passaic officials said the judge must now approve the order to open the voting machine in order to count the votes, as is the case in Essex County.

According to NBC News, in Hudson County, at least some early votes were counted twice. Officials said the problem has been resolved.

According to reports, 89% of the statewide votes have been reported, but there are still hundreds of thousands of votes to be counted, including messy voting and early and absent voting. 

Political experts said that given the regions where the votes will come from and the typical trend of mailing, it is expected that the votes that have not yet been counted will be biased towards Murphy. 

But considering that the game is so close, the possibility of recounting is very high.