Padavan, Gennaro locked in paper chase

In the most hotly-contested campaign in the New York metro area, 18-term State Senator Frank Padavan and his challenger, City Councilmember James Gennaro, are still locked in a race that hinges on paper ballots.
The election night machine count of nearly 83,000 votes favored Padavan by a mere 723 votes - with thousands of “affidavit” and absentee ballots remaining to be counted.
The voting machines were impounded the next day and bi-partisan crews of Board of Election workers have been photocopying the envelopes containing individual paper ballots for observers from the two parties.
According to a Republican source monitoring the process, there are roughly 7,000 paper ballots to be examined, tallied and argued over.
“It’s taking a long time - they’ve burned out two machines getting copies to both camps,” a highly-placed Republican source told The Courier.
The Board of Elections examines the information on the envelopes and disqualifies ballots of persons who are not qualified - those not registered to vote, felons who are incarcerated or still on parole, or persons who filed an absentee ballot but didn’t apply for one in the first place, for example.
“The attorneys get the copies and may either seek to challenge their validity or try to get them reinstated,” the Republican source explained.
Attorney Michael Reich, executive director of the Queens Democratic Party, reportedly expressed confidence that the large number of absentee votes that were requested this year may represent younger voters (many away at college) representing a group favorable to Gennaro.
Conventional wisdom says that absentee ballots filed by homebound and elderly voters in nursing homes favor Padavan, as do military ballots, which are usually heavily supportive of Republicans.
The “recanvass” or re-examination of the impounded voting machines and count of “emergency ballots” used when machines broke down was scheduled to begin on Wednesday, November 12 at 10 a.m.
The actual counting of the other paper ballots won’t begin until the following day, and since these ballots are subject to challenge and the counting will be done by hand rather than scanner machine, observers say that a winner may not emerge until Monday, November 17, or even later.