New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday indicated she will be ramping up efforts to change New York's election laws with the goal of making it easier to vote in the state following the failure of multiple constitutional amendments last year at the ballot box. 

Hochul's comments, made at a forum held by the Cornell Institute of Politics, comes after the governor last month outlined her State of the State agenda, calling for a state-level voting rights act as well as efforts to expand ballot access to college students. 

Hochul has also called for a measure that would lower the voter registration deadline to 10 days prior to Election Day. 

"I will be very involved in ballot issues," she said. "Sometimes issues when you think they're so simple and commonsensical and that there will be unified support behind them, people don't take it out there to streets and fight, they get hijacked by other forces and then that's how you lose."

Voters last year rejected constitutional amendments that would have ended the 10-day voter registration requirement as well as allow for no-excuse absentee balloting. Conservative organizations and Republican officials campaigned against the proposals, and good-government advocates, as well as progressive groups, argued there was not enough of an effort to counteract the opposition. 

"I was new to the position, but I see now that there are opportunities that must be resurrected and a much more aggressive approach toward defending these in the state of New York," Hochul said on Thursday.

New York has in recent years moved to enact changes that include several weekends of early voting. The pandemic has led to officials backing provisions that have in essence created no-excuse absentee ballot access, allowing people to vote that way if they are concerned voting in person would lead to contracting COVID-19.