If Hakeem Jeffries accedes to the Speakership in January, he could have New York’s Court of Appeals to thank. With control of the House possibly hinging on swing districts in the Empire State, the state’s top court just handed to the Democrats a win over rules for mail-in balloting. The court rejected a GOP challenge to New York’s Early Mail Voting Law. That opens the door to no-excuse absentee voting, along with fears of potentially decisive voter fraud.

The ruling is a win for Governor Hochul and Democrats, who have been pushing for expanded mail-in balloting options across the country since the Covid pandemic. What might have been defended as a temporary abrogation of the tradition that voters are expected to cast ballots in person has devolved among partisans on the left to be seen as a kind of complement to the Democratic Party’s aggressive get out the vote tactics.

Instead of the immemorial custom of heading to the polls on Election Day and casting one’s ballot in person — and in secret — along with millions of one’s fellow Americans as a rite of democracy, the Democrats have turned voting into a kind of multi-week extended symposium, what with early voting on top of  the rise of mail-in balloting. Once, voters needed to supply an excuse to get an absentee ballot. Now, it’s increasingly optional.

This isn’t merely a procedural gripe. The expectation of in-person voting is embedded in the Constitution of New York, explains the Empire Center’s Cam Macdonald. The option to skip a trip to the polling-place and mail in a ballot, he says “is a substantial departure from the history of New Yorkers promoting election integrity,” not to mention the heritage of “taking incremental approaches to making exceptions to in-person voting.” 

Mr. Macdonald notes that “from its founding in 1777,” New York “has promoted in-person voting by secret ballot,” with “exceptions by constitutional amendment as circumstances have required.” That principle animated the GOP’s opposition to lax mail-in voting rules. Despite the historical record on this head, though, New York’s chief judge, Rowan Wilson, along with five colleagues, espied in its constitution no requirement for in-person voting.

The high court’s ruling purports to decide, as Congresswoman Elise Stefanik put it, “that for over 150 years, New York’s elected officials, voters, and judges misunderstood their own state’s Constitution.” As recently as 2018, the press association reports, New Yorkers “generally could only vote by absentee ballot” if they had an excuse like “serving in the military, traveling abroad or suffering from an illness.” That all changed during the pandemic.

While Democrats have come to embrace the practice, they used to be more skeptical. In a 2004 hearing Congressman Jerrold Nadler noted that “paper ballots are extremely susceptible to fraud,” offering to provide “experience which would make your head spin.” While evidence has not emerged to show the lax voting rules in 2020 tilted the presidential election, questions and concerns abound over the security and verifiability of voting by mail.

New York’s Early Mail Voting Law, with its loose mail-in ballot rules, defied the voters who in 2021 rejected a Constitutional amendment to allow “no-excuse absentee voting,” Mr. Macdonald notes. It might not impact the presidential election in New York, since the tight race between Presidents Biden and Trump has given way to a Trump-Harris matchup. With the GOP’s narrow control of the House in the balance, though, mail ballots could be decisive.

The Democrats are already salivating at the prospect of retaking the House, riding on the perceived coattails of their new presidential nominee. With the Cook Political Report designating GOP House seats at New York’s 4th, 17th, and 19th districts toss-ups, expect a push from Democrats there. “We’re inside the red zone,” Mr. Jeffries says. “We’re inside the 5-yard line.” Count on mail-in ballots to help push the Democrats to a touchdown.