New York's top court upholds mail-in voting for all, rejecting Republican challenge

By Joseph Ax

(Reuters) - New York's highest court upheld a state law on Tuesday that allows any voter to cast a ballot by mail, rejecting a Republican-led lawsuit challenging the statute.

In a 6-1 decision, the state Court of Appeals affirmed lower court rulings that the Early Mail Voter Act, which was passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature and signed by Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul last year, did not run afoul of the state constitution.

Republican U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, a close ally of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, led the lawsuit, arguing that the constitution requires in-person voting unless a voter is away from home on Election Day or suffers from an illness or a disability.

"Nothing in the Constitution's text clearly establishes an in-person voting requirement," Chief Judge Rowan Wilson wrote for the majority.

Since Trump's false claims in 2020 that the presidential election was rife with fraud, Republicans in numerous states have sought to impose limits on voting, including restrictions on mail voting.

But the national Republican Party has urged its supporters to vote early and by mail this year, even as Trump has sometimes undermined that message by claiming without evidence that mail voting is susceptible to cheating.

The New York court acknowledged that the sequence of events that led to the law was "troubling." Democratic lawmakers put a constitutional amendment to expand mail voting on the 2021 ballot, but voters rejected the measure, which was opposed by Republicans.

Following that election, legislators decided that no constitutional amendment was required after all and enacted the mail-in voting law.

"Upholding the Act in these circumstances may be seen by some as disregarding the will of those who voted in 2021," Wilson wrote. "But our role is to determine what our Constitution requires, even when the resulting analysis leads to a conclusion that appears, or is, unpopular."

In a statement, Stefanik called the ruling "disgraceful" and added: "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."

Hochul called the decision "a victory for democracy & another loss for those seeking to disenfranchise New Yorkers" in a post on X.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Stephen Coates)