As the counting continues in Northeast Queens, Frank Padavan is doing what was expected of him. The eighteen term Senator and his workers are vigorously challenging paper ballots from the heavily Democratic district. Frank got his most serious challenge to the seat in decades and he is sweating bullets. His campaign signs say "Nobody cares like Frank" but what he really means is caring about disenfranchising the new voters in his district who overwhelmingly signed up to vote for Obama.
From The NY Daily News:
A still-undecided state Senate contest in Queens turned ugly Tuesday as Democrats accused Sen. Frank Padavan's supporters of launching a massive effort to discard paper ballots cast by minority voters.
"They are systematically trying to exclude Asians, Hispanics and Democrats from the count," said Michael Reich, executive secretary of the Queens Democratic Party.
As the challenges mount, expect this to get increasingly nasty. Padavan does not want to lose his seat and the Senate GOP (along with the Gang of Three) want to hold onto power by keeping progressive Democrat Jim Gennaro out of Albany. So what has gone on so far over there?
Affidavit ballots are generally from first-time voters. Given the huge turnout Barack Obama's candidacy sparked, Gennaro believes most of those affidavits are Democrats.
Last Wednesday, a recanvass of the machine tally reduced Padavan's lead to just 503 votes.
The next day, some two dozen Board of Elections staff members and representatives of the two candidates began counting the paper.
Gennaro's people say they have not challenged a single ballot the board's staff has ruled eligible. They say Padavan's people, on the other hand, have tried to disqualify an astonishing number of Hispanic and Asian surnamed voters.
Republicans claim they aren't interested in disenfranchising people, but if the totals show a narrowing lead for Padavan you can almost predict the percentage of challenges to go up. As the DN notes, 120 votes have been contested thus far with only 2,000 out of 8,300 ballots counted. No matter what, a brutal fight to the finish is nearly certain.
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