-5- Nos. 56 & 58 also had to file a certificate of acceptance in regard to her designation as the Working Families Party primary candidate by March 24, 2020 because she was not a duly enrolled member of this party. A cover sheet was filed on April 2, 2020 and a certificate of acceptance was filed on April 1, 2020, rendering them both untimely under the new deadlines of L 2020, ch 24, Election Law § 6-134 (2), BOE Rules C.1 and Election Law § 6-158 (2). As a consequence, the Board of Elections invalidated her petitions. Whether the belated filing amounts to a “fatal defect” under Election Law § 1-106 (2) turns on the Appellate Division’s fact-finding that the sole cause of the delay was COVID-19 illness or quarantine, as well as the obvious intent and purpose of the legislature in passing Chapter 24. After all, “[i]n statutory interpretation, legislative intent is the great and controlling principle” and there may be “instances where the literal meaning of words is not to be so slavishly adhered to as to defeat the general purpose and manifest policy intended to be promoted” (Carr v New York State Board of Elections, 40 NY2d 556, 559 [1976] [citations omitted]). III. A. Petitioner’s filings must be considered in proper context, so first I turn to the events surrounding her delayed submissions. The legislature enacted Chapter 24 on March 18, 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic during which New York State, and New York City in particular as the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, experienced unique and extreme circumstances affecting every aspect of daily life. Through a series of -5-