New York mail voting law confirmed – Telemundo New York (47)

NEW YORK – The state’s highest court on Tuesday upheld a New York law allowing registered voters to cast their ballots by mail, rejecting a Republican challenge to the legislation.

The state Court of Appeals ruling 6-1 upheld the lower courts’ decision, finding that the voting expansion law passed by the Legislature last year did not violate the state constitution. The lawsuit was part of a broader GOP effort to tighten voting rules after the 2020 election and was led by US Representative Elise Stefanik.

Opponents argued that the state constitution requires most people to vote in person. Chief Justice Rowan Wilson wrote in the majority opinion that while the case was “difficult” and one the Supreme Court had never considered before, there was no such requirement.

The decision means that the millions of New Yorkers expected to vote in the November 5th election will be able to cast their ballots by mail if they choose, something that only a small fraction could do. of people to do before a series of rule changes that began in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Republicans denounced the court’s decision.

“New York’s judicial 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 understood their own state Constitution , and that out-of-state in-person voting was not required. absent current legal process,” Stefanik said in a prepared statement.

The Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James are among the New York Democrats who applauded the decision.

“Generations of Americans have fought to gain and protect the right to vote, and it is our responsibility to continue removing the barriers that exist today that prevent too many people from voting.” exercise that right,” Hochul said in a written statement.

As of the 2018 presidential election, New Yorkers could generally only vote by mail if something prevented them from voting in person, such as serving in the military, traveling abroad, or suffer from illness.

That suddenly changed in the spring of 2020, when Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order allowing people to cast their ballots by mail to stop the spread of COVID- 19 at closed polling stations. At the time, the virus was killing thousands of people in the state.

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

Democrats first tried to make mail-in voting permanent in New York through a constitutional amendment in 2021, but voters rejected the proposal after a campaign by conservatives, who said it would lead to fraud voters. At the time, there were also concerns that the absentee ballot counting process, which sometimes lasted weeks, was delaying the release of election results.

Lawmakers then changed the state’s voting rules without changing the constitution, through the Early Voting by Mail Act, which took effect in January.

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

“Voters considered the proposal and voted against it. After losing the vote, the legislature decided that no constitutional amendment was necessary and passed the law,” Wilson wrote. “Some may feel that maintaining the law in these circumstances ignores the will of those who voted in 2021.”

“But our duty,” he said, “is to determine what our Constitution requires, even when the resulting analysis comes to a conclusion that appears, or which is neutral.”

The court’s majority said it had evaluated drafts of state constitutions dating back to 1777, and concluded that there is now “no language that specifically requires a personal vote ,” though Wilson said lawmakers and leaders have often acted as if.

In his dissenting opinion, Judge Michael Garcia said the state constitution has been understood for more than 200 years to limit absentee voting to people who could not appear at the polls in person. “The ‘universal’ mail-in voting legislation inexcusably violates that constitutional limitation,” he wrote.

Besides, he said, the legislature’s decision to change the law after the proposed constitutional amendment failed voters said “we never need you anyway.” He said that “the court has both the power and the duty to correct what happened here, and our failure to do so is demeaning and overstepping the will of the People.”