Senate to pass voting rights bills today

Even with affordability top of mind for lawmakers and the governor alike at the start of the new year, the state Senate is continuing its tradition of starting the session off by passing a series of voting rights bills. Fears about election access and safety are certainly reemerging as President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office later this month, but the decision to prioritize voting rights legislation bucks legislative leaders’ stated desire to focus on increasing affordability for working-class New Yorkers.

On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins was joined by Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris, newly minted Elections Committee Chair Kristen Gonzalez and state Sens. Shelley Mayer, James Skoufis, Zellnor Myrie and Rachel May to announce a series of election reform bills set to be voted on by the state Senate later in the day. 

The package includes measures that would ban foreign spending in New York elections, prohibit voter suppression and deception, expand automatic voter registration, mandate “paid for by” language on political action committees’ websites, allow for county-wide polling locations, make board of elections commissioner a full-time position, allow voters to register to vote at secondary locations, permit the state Board of Elections to join and share information with multistate voter list maintenance organizations and direct the Board of Elections to create uniform training for all election commissioners. 

“People need to feel confident,” Stewart-Cousins said. “Sometimes you get information that makes you so despondent that you don’t want to vote.” 

While a recent poll from Marist University reported that 30% of Americans don’t think national elections are open and fair, polls have repeatedly shown that New Yorkers’ top concern is affordability. A Siena College poll from December found that found that 43% of New Yorkers believed the cost of living should be legislators’ top priority this session. Some analyses of Vice President Kamala Harris’ election defeat have also faulted Democrats for focusing more on Trump’s threat to democratic norms than on quality of life issues affecting voters.

2025 may have been the time to break tradition, Gov. Kathy Hochul herself moved her State of the State address from the Assembly chamber to the Egg Performing Arts Center for one. Yet so called “Democracy Day” remains. 

“How did I get here?” Stewart-Cousins asked. “Was it because of affordability or was it because people actually came out and voted for us to be here?”

Republicans have almost habitually challenged Democrats’ previous attempts to strengthen voting rights – including expansions of voting by mail and early voting – and the latest election reforms are also likely to be challenged in court.

Republican state Sen. George Borello, the ranking member on the Election Committee, called the bill package “grandstanding.”

“When you’ve got a state that is declining, people consider the state to beheading in the wrong direction you have got to come up with as much of a deflection as you can, and trying to create a problem where there isn’t one is a perfect way to do it,” Borello said. 

The bills are expected to pass the state Senate later this afternoon.