Padavan-Gennaro count plods on

Two weeks after Election Day, there is still no winner of the 11th Senate District race pitting two-term City Councilmember James Gennaro against 18-term incumbent Republican Frank Padavan.
More than 90,000 total ballots were cast in the contest. The initial machine count of nearly 83,000, favored Padavan by 723 votes. A Queens County judge ordered the machines impounded until Wednesday, November 12, when they were checked, or “re-canvassed.”
The machine recount uncovered transcription errors which reduced Padavan’s margin by roughly 200 votes. After the “emergency” paper ballots - cast during machine breakdowns - were counted, Gennaro was trailing the incumbent by a mere 437 votes.
“We expected to do better in the emergency ballots,” said Republican spokesperson Vincent Tabone. “One machine in a strongly pro-Padavan district was down for over three hours. It’s possible that some people gave up and left,” he speculated.
That afternoon, the hand count of roughly 8,000 absentee and “provisional” paper ballots began at Board of Elections (BOE) headquarters.
The ballots are being reviewed in numerical order by electoral district (ED), for each of the six Assembly Districts (AD) that are wholly or partly included in Padavan’s Senate District.
An equal number of Republicans and Democrats, including BOE employees, attorneys and representatives for each side, are examining every ballot by hand, comparing absentee ballots to the list of voters who applied for one and checking provisional ballots against voter rolls.
As of press time, roughly 125 of these paper ballots have been challenged - meaning that they are set aside, to be evaluated by a judge after all the other ballots have been counted, who will either allow or discard each ballot after hearing.
As of Wednesday afternoon, November 19, all ballots in the 24th and most in the 25th AD had been counted, representing parts of Little Neck, Douglaston, Bayside, Flushing, Fresh Meadows and Whitestone.
Nearly three-quarters of the ballots remain from the other portions of the district, including College Point, northern areas of Bayside, Little Neck and Douglaston as well as parts of Hollis, Bellerose, Jamaica and Queens Village.
As of press time, Padavan’s lead had climbed back to 545 votes, leading to expressions of confidence from the Republican camp.
They concede however, that they’ve been frequently wrong in this election and anything is possible.
If the race is close enough when the counting is done that the challenged ballots could affect the outcome, the election could be decided in court - weeks from now.