New York Times: New York Today: Why Don’t We Have Early Voting?

The midterm elections are about a week away, but millions of people have already voted: More than half of states offer early voting in-person or by mail.

New York is not one of them. …

“There is no good reason why New York doesn’t have early voting; our elected officials have decided, at least up until now, that it’s not worth the trouble,” said Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a nonpartisan group advocating for improvements to the state’s voting system. “The most logical explanation is: It’ll be expensive or complicated for the counties.

“It’s uniformly popular in every other state that has it, whether it’s a red state or a blue state,” she added. “The public likes it, election administrators like it, so it’s an embarrassment — to be blunt — that New York is not willing to assist voters in providing early voting.”

New York has never had early voting, and election laws would need to be changed by the state Legislature to provide it.

“The Assembly has passed it several times; the Senate has so far refused,” Ms. Lerner said, describing how early voting could benefit voters facing all kinds of predictable and unexpected challenges on Election Day.

(Even so, Common Cause is part of a large coalition, Let New York Vote, that has been pushing for these changes in Albany for several years.)