Gov. Kathy Hochul is seen here Thursday in New York. (Provided photo — Susan Watts/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a raft of new election legislation into law on Tuesday, expanding access to absentee ballots, opening up chances to fix errors on submitted ballots, closing legal loopholes in election administration and bringing state election law into compliance with federal election laws.

“Our democracy is rooted in the sacrifices of those willing to fight for that idea greater than any one of us, and with this legislation, we are strengthening our efforts to protect it,” Hochul said. “Every New Yorker deserves the opportunity to have their voice heard, and these laws bring the ideals of self-governance closer to reality.”

One of the laws fixes a loophole left in 2019 when the state legislature passed a law requiring that a village conducting a ballot referendum in a November election send the text of that referendum to the Board of Elections at least three months before the election, so absentee ballots can be sent to military members abroad with appropriate time to vote and return them.

That change did not address all aspects of village election law, however, making it impossible for a village to meet legal requirements for all aspects of village election law. The bill signed on Tuesday brings the remaining aspects of village election law up to compliance with the timeline set in 2019.

Another bill signed Tuesday allows for pre-registered voters, that is people younger than 18 who will be eligible to vote by the next election date, to apply for an absentee or early mail voting ballot while still a minor.

Another bill signed Tuesday would adjust the timeline for the process to “cure” an absentee or early mail ballot. Under New York law, people who vote by absentee or early mail ballot have the right to “cure” errors on their ballot, like a missing signature, once an issue is identified. That cure process was time limited under the previous law, with the voter required to respond to the cure affirmation request within a few days of when the Board of Elections mailed the document out.

Citing ongoing delays with mail processed by the United States Postal Service, the law signed Tuesday changes that timeframe to allow a cure to be received and processed if it’s received by 5 p.m. on the seventh day after the election, or seven days after the cure affirmation is mailed out, whichever is longer.

It also permits a voter to return the affirmation form to the Board of Elections in person, by mail or via email.

Another bill signed into law Tuesday changes the order in which offices up for election will appear on the ballot. Under the previous setup, high offices like governor and president appeared first, and candidates for state judicial seats appear next, between the executive offices and the legislative ones.

Under the law as it stands after Tuesday, the state electoral ballot will be structured with the presidential and gubernatorial offices listed first, Congressional and state legislature offices next, and judicial offices at the end.

In the bill’s justification memo, the authors, Sen. James Skoufis, D-Middletown, and Assemblywoman Pamela Hunter, D-Syracuse, argued that the presence of the low-attention, often uncontested judicial races at the top of the ballot led to a disproportionate number of voters simply stopping after voting for the top offices, skipping over the legislative and judicial elections entirely.

The lawmakers cited data from the most recent presidential election in 2020. In Albany, where there were no judicial races on the ballot, only 2.4% of voters stopped voting before the end of the ballot, while in Nassau County, where there were judicial races on the ballot, the drop of was 7%.

“These numbers show that if the congressional candidates were listed before the judicial ones in Nassau County, more people would have been likely to complete their ballots,” the justification memo reads.

Another bill signed by Hochul on Tuesday fixes a process inconsistency in when New York calls its meeting of presidential electors, and how the results of their vote is transmitted to the Capitol in Washington, D.C., for the certification of elector votes.

The law now specifies that New York’s will meet wherever the secretary of state designates on the first Tuesday following the second Wednesday in December after each presidential election, and requires that the results of their vote be sent immediately after it is taken by the most expeditious method available. This puts New York into compliance with the federal Electoral Count Reform Act passed in 2022.

Hochul also signed a bill that expands the definition of a poll watcher in New York to automatically include most New York licensed attorneys, and another bill that gives the Attorney General’s Civil Rights Bureau the power to write and enforce rules aimed at expanding and protecting the right to vote for “protected classes” as defined by the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, passed in 2022.