Amid the leadership drama in Albany, where three dissident Democrats are threatening the party’s newfound majority in the Senate, the eyes of Democratic and Republican leaders are also fixed on a large, humid room with linoleum floors in Queens. There, the ballots are still being counted in a razor-thin race in which Senator Frank Padavan, a Republican, remains ahead of Councilman James F. Gennaro, a Democrat, by about 500 votes.

The stakes are particularly high for Senator Malcolm A. Smith, who leads the Senate Democrats and is monitoring the complicated math that challenges his leadership. The Democrats have apparently won 32 seats in the Senate, but three dissident members have yet to pledge their support for Mr. Smith. That limits him, at the moment, to 29 votes in the 62-member body.

A victory by Mr. Gennaro would bring the Republicans down to 29 votes and provide Mr. Smith with a 30th vote. One of the dissident Democrats, Senator Rubén Díaz Sr., says he would not vote for a Republican leader. So, at the very least, a Gennaro victory would improve the prospects for Mr. Smith and dim them for the Senate Republicans.

The politics of Albany have therefore made the counting of the remaining paper ballots in the 11th State Senate District race a high-stakes production. And the painstaking process of counting ballots has led to accusations of voter disenfranchisement and ethnic discrimination.

The preliminary results after the Nov. 4 election had Mr. Padavan leading by 723 votes. That margin narrowed when voting machine totals were recounted. Now, more than 8,000 absentee and other emergency paper ballots are being tallied at the New York City Board of Elections offices in Forest Hills, in a process overseen by lawyers for both candidates.

Democratic officials and lawyers have accused the Republicans of systematically challenging the ballots of voters with surnames that sound Asian or Hispanic, a charge that Republican officials deny. The charge is particularly stinging in a Senate district that, in the 2000 census, was nearly 25 percent Asian and 13 percent Hispanic.

“They are challenging ballots based on a technicality that had never been enforced in the past,” said Michael H. Reich, the executive secretary of the Queens Democratic Party and one of the lawyers overseeing the counting. “But they are only doing it to Democratic voters and voters with names that they assume are African-American, Latino or Asian. They’re not doing it with voters they presume are white. I am outraged by this.”

Specifically, Mr. Reich said that under a longstanding bipartisan practice, the votes of those who have filled out paper ballots have been counted, so long as they are listed as registered voters. The controversy centers on so-called affidavit ballots, in which voters attest to having moved into a district other than where they are registered. In some cases, the paper ballots failed to include the voter’s prior address. In other cases, the voter neglected to check one of several boxes indicating a change of address. Those ballots have been deemed ineligible by the Republican officials.

In the past, Democrats claim, all such ballots were counted. But this time, they say, the Republican commissioner of the Board of Elections in Queens has ruled that ballots should be invalidated if they do not include the signature or stamp of a poll worker.

That ruling brought a firestorm of criticism from Democratic officials and lawyers, who point out that the Republican commissioner, Judith Stupp, is also employed as the manager of downstate operations for New York State Senate Republicans. She is also a contributor to Mr. Padavan’s campaign.

Ms. Stupp defended her role, saying: “I took an oath to make sure that every legal vote be counted. And I feel that what I’ve done has been honest and fair.” She said she did not think it appropriate to comment on the specifics of the vote-counting process.

Ms. Stupp said that after the initial days of the paper-ballot counting, she stopped attending the sessions, turning over her responsibilities to the chief Republican deputy clerk, Katherine James. When asked whether she would recuse herself from further involvement in the counting, she said, “I honestly don’t see any reason why I should.”

On a recent afternoon, over a period of several hours, a reporter observed that the Democratic lawyers objected to none of the ballots that came before the group. Meanwhile, the Republican lawyer, John Ciampoli, registered repeated objections, in several cases regarding voters with names that could be perceived as Hispanic or Asian.

Mr. Padavan strongly denies that the objections are related to ethnicity. Rather, he said, they were raised in cases in which people were registered to vote in other districts.

“Surnames have nothing to do with this,” Mr. Padavan said. “The pertinent question is whether the voters are registered in the district. Every vote is counted in our democracy. But if a voter is registered in another district, that voter is disqualified. So, every legally cast vote should be counted.”

He said that the charges of Republican discrimination represented “more of the sleazy, hypocritical work” of Democratic operatives. He pointed out that Ms. James, the Republican clerk monitoring the process, is black and that her Democratic counterpart, George Gonzalez, the deputy executive director of the board, is Hispanic. “They are the ones making the judgments about whether the ballots are valid,” Mr. Padavan said.

For the time being, the disputed ballots are placed in a cardboard box on the floor of the meeting room, and a judge will eventually rule on their validity. As the pile grows, so does the anticipation among Democratic and Republican leaders throughout the state.

Source: NY Times