(The Center Square) — New York's highest court upheld the state's mail voting law before November's elections, rejecting a challenge from Republicans who argued the state's constitution requires most people to vote in person.
The 6-1 ruling by the New York Court of Appeals, issued Tuesday, sustains the voter expansion law approved by the Democratic-controlled Legislature in 2023 that allows any registered voter to cast a ballot by mail.
"Our task is to rigorously analyze the constitutional text and history to determine if New York’s Early Mail Voter Act is unconstitutional," Chief Judge Rowan Wilson wrote for the majority. "We now hold that it is not."
New York Republicans, including Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., filed a legal challenge arguing that the law directly violates the New York Constitution, which only allows voting by mail if the person is out of the state or country on Election Day, sick, taking care of someone who is ill, incarcerated or because of illness or physical disability.
Passage of the bill followed the rejection of a constitutional amendment to authorize "no excuse" balloting by mail, which failed, with more than 55% of voters rejecting the referendum. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, signed the measure into law.
Stefanik, the House's Republican Conference Chairwoman, ripped the high court's ruling and called on New York voters to "swamp the ballot box and vote Republican up and down the ballot and rid ourselves of New York’s politically corrupt Democrats."
"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," she posted on social media.
"The court disgracefully claims to know the constitutional framers' intent more than they did, disregarding the framers' understanding, prior constitutional amendments on this issue, and constitutional interpretation norms as 'not relevant," Stefanik added.
Hochul praised the court's ruling as a "victory for democracy" and said it comes as a "loss for those seeking to disenfranchise New Yorkers" by restricting voting options.
"Generations fought to secure [and] protect the right to vote. We have a responsibility to remove barriers that still prevent far too many from exercising that right,” she said in a statement.
Two lower courts rejected the GOP arguments against the law, but the plaintiffs appealed to the state Court of Appeals, which agreed to consider the legal challenge and said it "has never been asked to determine what the Constitution requires in this regard."
Lawyers for the plaintiffs had argued that New York's law "protects fraudulent votes from the post-election scrutiny that they have traditionally received" while favoring "fraudulent ballots over genuine ballots cast in person."
However, lawyers for New York's elections division argued that the law's requirements for absentee ballots are consistent with longstanding rules for contested in-person votes.
The New York lawsuit is one of more than two dozen filed by Republican groups challenging 'no-excuse' absentee voting laws ahead of the November elections, many of them arguing the changes are unconstitutional.
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