How can it not be?
How do they know who actually voted?
The way New York counts ballots was thrown into chaos on Friday after a judge ruled that several of the state’s recent voting reforms are unconstitutional.
State Supreme Court Justice Dianne Freestone sided with Republicans in a lawsuit brought in late September, which argued against a law which allows people to vote absentee if they fear contracting a disease like Covid-19 . Freestone also ruled that the new process for “canvassing,” or ensuring that absentee ballots are inspected and prepared for counting – violates candidates’ rights in several ways, including by making it more difficult to raise a legal challenge when there are questions over a ballot’s validity.
” The framers of the Constitution did not intend to grant (and did not grant) the Legislature carte blanche to enact legislation over absentee voting ,” she wrote.
That said, Friday’s 28-page ruling fell just short of invalidating hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots already issued to New York voters, which the Republicans asked the judge to do.
For now, the ruling means local election officials will have to soon pause the inspection of absentee ballots , which were being processed on a rolling basis prior to Election Day for the first time this year. The Democrat-led state Legislature approved the new process in a 2021 law meant to expedite the state’s notoriously slow procedures for counting mail-in ballots.
It also means the more than 427,000 New York voters — including more than 187,000 in New York City — who have already requested and received their absentee ballots will still be able to cast their ballots for the Nov. 8 election, regardless of whether they elected to receive mail-in ballots due to fears of spreading illness. Currently, 108,000 New Yorkers have completed and returned their absentee ballots. -Gothamist
Democratic official immediately responded with a notice that they would appeal the decision .
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ny-judge-rules-vote-mail-law-unconstitutional