- 14 - Nos. 56 & 58 deadlines” (Settineri, 197 AD2d at 727 [Balletta, J. dissenting]), thereby holding that legislative intent must be paramount when interpreting the Election Law. The Appellate Division dissent also dismissed as speculative the argument that the proper nominating process could have been sped up (id. at 728). In this appeal, following the reasoning of Settineri, we must read Chapter 24 in line with the overarching legislative intent of protecting public health above all else. As the majority notes, the Governor issued a series of executive orders that “suspended or modified” some of the legislature’s directives “in response to the public health crisis” (majority op at 7). These orders evince the obvious intent to permit individuals to work and carry out essential business even during a shelter at home order and with the restrictions on business and public gatherings. In context and read altogether, they do not, as the majority and respondent contend (majority op at 7-8), show an express intent, by their omission in waiving some filing deadlines, to rigidly enforce accelerated deadlines when an individual would have to violate the government’s many directives to stay home when ill. Rather, the tension between the filing deadlines and the government’s public health orders must be harmonized and resolved in favor of the government’s overall policy choices. Contrary to the majority’s suggestion (majority op at 8), this resolution that the belated filings were not a “fatal defect” is not an attempt to disregard or undermine enforcement of the Election Law, but a way to reconcile competing legislative and governmental directives and carry out this Court’s constitutionally mandated responsibility of interpreting the law in line with the intent of the legislature (Carr, 40 NY2d at 559). It - 14 -