Hearing continues in Padavan v. Gennaro race

The dispute over the vote count in the race between incumbent Senator Frank Padavan and City Councilmember James Gennaro resumed after a six-day hiatus caused in part by observance of Martin Luther King Day and Inauguration Day.
At issue in the current hearing, which began on Friday, January 16, is whether State Supreme Court Judge Kevin Kerrigan should overrule the city’s Board of Elections (BOE) “final determination” that 1,750 paper ballots in the race are invalid and not votes.
Initially, roughly 2,000 of the 8,000 paper ballots in the contest were rejected by the BOE clerks. During the course of the paper ballot count, 252 of the ballots were disputed, and are now in a “court box” for examination by a judge, if they would affect the outcome.
Attorneys for Gennaro are saying the there were “irregularities” in the vote canvassing procedure in Queens, where a bi-partisan panel of BOE clerks first invalidated the envelopes containing absentee and affidavit ballots.
Republicans insist that both sides received photocopies of the envelopes for all 8,000 envelopes. They say that Democrats had them on a computer database, and could have asked to review any of them during the count, but didn’t.
They want Kerrigan to declare the ballot counting complete – after which they would retract their objection to the 252 disputed ballots and Padavan would be certified as the winner.
BOE employees are among those due to testify at the hearing.