New York’s mail-in voting law upheld by the state’s top court

A New York law allowing all registered voters to cast their ballots by mail was upheld Tuesday by the state’s highest court, which rejected a Republican challenge to the legislation.

The 6-1 ruling from the state Court of Appeals affirmed lower courts in finding that the voting expansion law approved by the Legislature last year did not violate the state’s constitution. The lawsuit was part of a widespread GOP effort to tighten voting rules after the 2020 election and was led by U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik.

Challengers argued that the state constitution mandates that most people vote in person. Chief Judge Rowan Wilson wrote in the majority opinion that while the question was “difficult” and one the high court had never considered before, there was no such requirement.

The decision means that the millions of New Yorkers expected to vote in the Nov. 5 election will be able to cast ballots by mail if they wish — something that only a sliver of people could do before a series of rule changes that began in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Republicans denounced the court’s decision.

“New York’s court system is so corrupt and disgraceful that today’s ruling has essentially declared that for over 150 years, New York’s elected officials, voters, and judges misunderstood their own state’s Constitution, and that in-person voting was never required outside the current legal absentee process,” Stefanik said in a prepared statement.

Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James were among New York Democrats who praised the ruling.

“Generations of Americans fought to secure and protect the right to vote, and we have a responsibility to continue removing the barriers that persist today that prevent far too many people from exercising that right,” Hochul said in a written statement.

As recently as the 2018 presidential election, New Yorkers generally could only vote by absentee ballot if something prevented them from voting in person, such as serving in the military, traveling abroad or suffering from an illness.

That changed abruptly in the spring of 2020, when then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order allowing people to cast mail-in ballots to stop the possible spread of COVID-19 at indoor polling sites. At the time, the virus was killing thousands of people in the state.

More than 1.5 million New Yorkers voted by absentee ballot in that year’s presidential election — and the pattern that emerged, both in New York and elsewhere, was that Democrats were more likely to have voted by mail than Republicans.

Democrats initially attempted to make voting by mail permanent in New York through a constitutional amendment in 2021, but voters rejected the proposal after a campaign from conservatives, who said it would lead to voter fraud. At the time, there were also concerns that the sometimes weekslong process of counting absentee ballots was delaying reporting of election results.

Lawmakers then changed the state’s voting rules without amending the constitution, via the Early Mail Voter Act, which went into effect in January.

In his majority opinion, Wilson wrote that it was “troubling” that state lawmakers had pushed ahead with legislation expanding mail-in voting so soon after the proposed constitutional amendment failed.

“The voters considered the proposition and voted against it. Having lost the question before the voters, the legislature then decided that no constitutional amendment was required and passed the Act,” Wilson wrote. “Upholding the Act in these circumstances may be seen by some as disregarding the will of those who voted in 2021.”

“But our role,” he added, “is to determine what our Constitution requires, even when the resulting analysis leads to a conclusion that appears, or is, unpopular.”

The court’s majority said it had evaluated versions of the state constitution dating back to 1777, and concluded that it now “contains no language that explicitly requires in-person voting,” though Wilson said lawmakers and leaders have often acted as if it does.

In his dissent, Judge Michael Garcia said that the state constitution had been understood for more than 200 years to limit absentee voting to people unable to appear at the polls in person. “The ‘no excuse’ universal mail voting legislation violates that constitutional limitation,” he wrote.

Besides that, he said, the legislature’s decision to change the law after the proposed constitutional amendment failed essentially told voters “we never needed you anyway.” He said the court has “both the power and the duty to remedy what happened here, and our failure to do so diminishes us and nullifies the will of the People.”