Residents of the 11th state Senate district in northeast Queens may be without an Albany representative next month as the legal wrangling over that seat continues.

An appellate court is expected to decide today whether the Board of Elections should resume counting almost 2,000 paper ballots previously marked invalid.

Republicans are expected to appeal any decision that allows those ballots to be counted.

Longtime incumbent state Sen. Frank Padavan has said he defeated his Democratic challenger, City Councilman James Gennaro, in last month’s election. Lawyers for the Republican Party have gone to court to stop the count.

The latest numbers have Padavan ahead by 580 votes.

But lawyers for Gennaro and the Queens County Democratic Party said the election isn’t over until the paper ballots are tallied.

“There is no question and no dispute that there are ballots there from people who are eligible to vote,” said Queens Democratic Party Executive Secretary Michael Reich.

“We want every vote to count,” Reich said. “We are fighting not just for Democratic votes but for Republican votes as well.”

Republicans believe those votes aren’t valid because of clerical errors on the ballots.

“A bipartisan team of Democrat and Republican officials at the Board of Elections has already determined these ballots to be invalid and unqualified to be cast,” said Joseph Conway, a spokesman for the New York State Republican Campaign Committee.

“Allowing them to be reintroduced months after the election would not only be unprecedented, it would also threaten to dilute the power of every vote that was legally cast by Queens residents,” he added.

Reich disagreed.

“We are ready to count the votes and let the chips fall where they may,” he said.

If the count goes his way, Padavan would be the sole Republican state legislator in Queens. Longtime state Sen. Serphin Maltese was defeated by Democratic Councilman Joseph Addabbo last month.

Source: NY Daily News