A New York state Appellate Court ruled on Tuesday that the state’s absentee ballot laws are constitutional and will allow voters to use COVID-19 as a reason to vote via absentee ballot and allow Boards of Elections to continue counting the ballots before Election Day.

Jerry Goldfeder, special counsel at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, director of the Fordham Law School Voting Rights and Democracy Project and author of "Goldfeder’s Modern Election Law," told Capital Tonight that “people should vote, if they haven’t already. If they have voted by absentee ballot, it will count.”

The law, which was implemented during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, was challenged by the state’s Republican and Conservative parties. Goldfeder said the court has rejected the argument put before it and that any new legal challenge would have to come from a different theory on the law.

The case can still be challenged up to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, if they decide to hear it. Goldfeder said the Court of Appeals rarely takes cases like this and that he is “confident” that the high court will agree with the lower court’s ruling.

Goldfeder adds that the Supreme Court has said that election laws should not be changed so close to an election.