ALBANY, NEW YORK – August 20, 2024 – Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE), a non-profit organization that supports litigation to protect election security and integrity, today issued the following statement regarding a ruling from the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, that undermines election integrity and disenfranchises more than 3 million New York voters.
RITE sponsored a lawsuit, brought by Rep. Elise Stefanik (NY-21) and others, against Governor Kathy Hochul and others, which argued that the state’s recent expansion of mail-in voting was unconstitutional since the state’s constitution limits absentee voting to those who are unable to get to the polls due to absence, illness, or disability.
Today’s decision is all the more shameful because New Yorkers were asked just three years ago, in 2021, if they wanted to give their legislature the power to authorize no-excuse mail-in voting. By a decisive 55 to 45 margin, they said no. The state legislature ignored the will of the people and pressed forward anyway, daring anyone to stop them. Today, the state’s judicial system confirmed that power trumps law in New York by giving its stamp of approval to the legislature’s theft of the people’s sovereign power.
RITE President Derek Lyons issued the following statement:
“In a remarkable act of judicial lawmaking, the New York Court of Appeals has rewritten New York’s Constitution to eliminate all limits on the legislature’s authority to regulate elections. For more than 150 years, New Yorkers have understood that their constitution requires in-person voting. That is why New Yorkers amended it to ensure soldiers fighting in the Civil War could vote absentee, and why they later amended it to provide absentee voting for those traveling for business or personal reasons, for the ill, and for the disabled. And that is why they were asked, in 2021, to again amend the constitution so the legislature could implement no-excuse absentee voting for all voters. The voters said no. Today, a court declared that all of this was meaningless. Apparently, none of these amendments or failed amendments meant anything because the legislature always had the power to authorize mail-in voting. It was, apparently, hiding in plain sight since 1777.
“This decision marks a shameful chapter for democracy and the rule of law. This was among the most clear-cut examples of an unconstitutional law that any court has encountered. New York legislators knew that the state constitution didn’t allow for no-excuse absentee voting. They knew the voters had specifically withheld from them the authority to enact it. But they did not care about either the constitution or the votes of 3 million of its citizens. They cared only about power. They wagered correctly that the New York Court of Appeals would not have the will to stop them. And New York’s democracy is greatly diminished as a result.”
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