A double-checking of votes today in Cary's razor-thin District B Town Council election showed that Don Frantz appears to be the unofficial winner after all.

The Wake County Board of Elections' unofficial count Thursday seemed to give Frantz a slim 28-vote lead over Vickie Maxwell in Tuesday's election.

Because dozens of provisional ballots had yet to be verified, a Maxwell victory could not be ruled out.

But Elections Director Cherie Poucher said today that an audit of the votes found math mistakes: several votes for Frantz had been missed, and a group of 24 one-stop ballots had been counted twice for Maxwell.

The new tally is 1,392 for Frantz and 1,339 for Maxwell, giving Frantz a 53-vote lead.

Across Cary, a total of 52 provisional votes have yet to be tallied -- not all of which are expected to involve District B, because there were three other council races that day.

Unless the count changes again, Frantz seems mathematically certain to win.