Newly minted Senate Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins will introduce the same-as measures of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver that would provide for early voting in New York and require greater financial disclosure of outside gruops, her office announced this afternoon.

“Early Voting is a smart approach to help increase the number of New Yorkers that take part in the democratic process. The easier we make it for eligible voters to participate the better it is for our democracy. Elections should be about the will of the people and not the special interests. Unfortunately, in this election cycle we saw outside groups like Common Sense use unprecedented amounts of money to try to influence election outcomes and drown out the voice of everyday New Yorkers. We need stronger financial disclosure for political advocacy groups. I commend the Speaker for introducing both bills and I have introduced the same bills in the Senate and hope these bills are allowed to come to the floor for a vote.”

The measures introduced by Silver was one of a slew of bills he introduced last week.

That Stewart-Cousins is backing the measure isn’t necessarily major, considering the limitations of legislative minorities in Albany. But it is a good way for Stewart-Cosuins to signal to Silver that she is early on backing a legislative goal.

Seperately, Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature have been at odds in the last year over voting issues. Most significantly last year was an effort to hold a unified primary date for state races. A federal judge had moved the Congressional primaries to June in order to satisfy military voting, but state leaders could come to an agreement on linking local and state primaries to the June date.

As for financial disclosure, that now appears to be the effort de jour when it comes to the often vague pledge of “campaign-finance reform.” But it all depends on what financial dislcosure may be required, and everyone in elected office, from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative Republicans and Democrats have had the benefit of outside groups raising tons of cash to back either their legislative proposals (the Committee to Save New York for Cuomo) or oppose their agendas.

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