New York's highest court upheld a state law on Tuesday permitting any registered voter to cast their ballots by mail, rejecting a Republican challenge to the law.
The 6-1 ruling, from the state Court of Appeals, agreed with a lower court that the statute is not in violation of the state's constitution. It responds to a suit led by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and several Republican groups, who sought to tighten voting rules following the 2020 election and skepticism over voter fraud.
Stefanik and the challengers said New York's constitution requires most people to vote in person, the Associated Press reported.
Noting the question was "difficult," Chief Judge Rowan Wilson wrote for the majority that the Constitution does not include such a mandate.
The law was signed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) last September as part of a package of bills designed to expand voting access across the Empire State.
Stefanik, the Houser Republican Conference Chairwoman, slammed the court's decision Tuesday and urged New York residents to "swamp" the ballot boxes this November.
"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 wrote.
"It's never been clearer: the only path forward to Save New York is to get commonsense New Yorkers to swamp the ballot box and vote Republican up and down the ballot and rid ourselves of New York's politically corrupt Democrats," she later added.
Hochul, meanwhile, called it a "victory for democracy" and a "loss for those seeking to disenfranchise New Yorkers."
"Generations fought to secure & protect the right to vote. We have a responsibility to remove barriers that still prevent far too many from exercising that right," she wrote on X Tuesday.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic prompting mail-in ballots in the 2020 election, New York residents typically could only vote by absentee ballot if certain circumstances prevented them from in-person voting, the AP reported. This included military service, abroad travel or illness.
In the spring of 2020, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) issued an executive order permitting voters to cast mail-in ballots to prevent the spread of COVID. More than 1.5 million people voted by absentee ballot in the 2020 presidential election in New York, the news wire added.
Democrats tried to making in-mail voting permanent in New York with a constitutional amendment, but it was rejected after conservatives alleged it would spark voter fraud, per the AP. Lawmakers, instead, altered the state's voting rules without changing the Constitution through the Early Mail Voter Act, which went into effect at the beginning of this year.
Wilson, in the ruling, said the timing between the failed amendment and new legislation was "troubling."
“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,” he 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 is to determine what our Constitution requires, even when the resulting analysis leads to a conclusion that appears, or is, unpopular," he said.
Judge Michael Garcia dissented, arguing that the state's Constitution has been understood to restrict absentee voting for more than 200 years.
The Associated Press contributed.
