New York state’s highest court has upheld a law challenged by Republicans that allows residents to vote by mail up to 10 days before Election Day in a 6–1 ruling.
Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the New York Early Voting Act into law in September 2023.
The legislation authorizes voters to apply to the New York State Board of Elections for a mail-in ballot online and requires the state to establish and maintain an electronic early mail-in ballot application system.
Republicans, led by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), sued the state, arguing that the law violated the state constitution.
New York Court of Appeals Chief Judge Rowan Wilson issued the majority opinion on Aug. 20.
“Though the State Constitution contains no language that explicitly requires in-person voting, the legislative and executive branches have often proceeded as if our Constitution requires as such,” Wilson wrote.
The court of appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that found that the state Legislature has the explicit power to regulate elections.
“Our Court has never been asked to determine what the Constitution requires in this regard,” Wilson wrote. “Recently, the legislature assumed that the Constitution requires in-person voting, passing concurrent resolutions culminating in the 2021 proposed amendment to authorize mail-in voting. We acknowledge that the public rejected that amendment, and we take seriously both the legislature’s position in 2021 and the voters’ rejection of the proposed constitutional amendment.”
When Hochul signed the bill in 2023, Republican state Sen. Mark Walczyk said in a statement that New York voters had already shown they didn’t want mail-in voting when they rejected the No-Excuse Absentee Voting Amendment in 2021.
In his dissent, Associate Judge Michael Garcia argued that although the Legislature does have plenary power to regulate elections, the citizens hold the power to limit that authority through the language of the state constitution.
“For more than 200 years, the State Constitution has restrained, and been understood to restrain, that plenary power with respect to absentee voting, limiting it to certain categories of voters unable to appear in person because of absence, illness, or physical disability,” he wrote.
He referenced New York citizens’ rejection of the No-Excuse Absentee Voting Amendment, which he said led voters to believe there would be no future mail-in voting legislation.
“A review of the plain text of the provisions at issue here establishes that the People intended the Constitution to limit the legislature’s authority to make laws governing absentee voting, and that the Early Mail Voter Act, whatever its merits or flaws as policy, goes beyond those limits and is therefore unconstitutional,” he said.
“This ruling is another indication of what one-party rule means for New York State,” Cox said.
