[EL] time at the polling booth

Wed Jul 8 09:09:39 PDT 2020

As an anecdote, my San Francisco garage is usually a polling place and I am usually a polling place official.  Perhaps 10% of the voters take at least 5 minutes.  They seem to be people who go into the booth and then start reading their voters handbook for the first time.  Once in a while we even have a voter, who is typically very elderly, who takes as long as 15 or 20 minutes.

Richard Winger 415-922-9779 PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147 

    On Wednesday, July 8, 2020, 8:16:08 AM PDT, Pamela S Karlan <pkarlan at stanford.edu> wrote:  

 The Arkansas law to the same effect — I don’t think it’s still in effect — was explicitly adopted to disenfranchise low-literacy black voters.  It combined the secret ballot with a time limit on time in the booth.

Pamela S. KarlanKenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest LawCo-Director, Stanford Supreme Court Litigation ClinicStanford Law School559  Nathan Abbott WayStanford, CA 94305karlan at stanford.edu650.725.4851

On Jul 8, 2020, at 6:07 AM, Douglas, Joshua A. <joshuadouglas at uky.edu> wrote:

Rick,
This is not entirely responsive, but at least one state--Tennessee--actually mandates how long a voter may spend casting a ballot. Here is a description from my articleState Judges and the Right to Vote:

a Tennessee appellate court broadly interpreted a Tennessee

statute regulating how much time a voter may spend in the voting booth so as

to effectuate an individual’s constitutional right to vote.176The statute at issue

limited a voter to five minutes in the voting booth if other voters were waiting

and otherwise to a maximum of ten minutes.177The evidence showed that,

because of a lengthy ballot and some precincts using new machines, there

were long lines on Election Day.178Almost half of all voters took longer than

five minutes to vote, while five percent took longer than ten minutes.179The court rejected the losing candidate’s argument that this evidence demonstrated that illegal votes tainted the election, noting that the voters’ failure to comply with the time limit was not a “serious” violation of the statute.180 Quoting theTennessee Supreme Court, the court explained, “[T]echnical non-conformity with election statutes will not necessarily void an election, as ‘such strictness would lead to defeat rather than uphold, popular election, and can not be maintained.’”181

The underlying case is Stuart v. Anderson Cty. Election Comm’n, 300 S.W.3d 683, 690 (Tenn. Ct. App.2009).

Josh 

From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> on behalf of Pildes, Rick <rick.pildes at nyu.edu>
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Subject: [EL] time at the polling booth #yiv1969846524 #yiv1969846524 _filtered {} _filtered {}#yiv1969846524 p.yiv1969846524x_MsoNormal, #yiv1969846524 li.yiv1969846524x_MsoNormal, #yiv1969846524 div.yiv1969846524x_MsoNormal {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:sans-serif;}#yiv1969846524 a:link, #yiv1969846524 span.yiv1969846524x_MsoHyperlink {color:#0563C1;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv1969846524 a:visited, #yiv1969846524 span.yiv1969846524x_MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:#954F72;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv1969846524 span.yiv1969846524x_EmailStyle17 {font-family:sans-serif;color:windowtext;}#yiv1969846524 .yiv1969846524x_MsoChpDefault {font-family:sans-serif;} _filtered {}#yiv1969846524 div.yiv1969846524x_WordSection1 {}#yiv1969846524 CAUTION: External Sender

Does anyone know of data about how much time voters typically spend casting their ballotsin the actual polling booth?  I’m sure this varies depending on how many races/issues are on the ballot, particularly in states that have a number of ballot initiatives to vote on in certain years.  I’m aware of the good piece by Dan Smith and Michael Herron in Electoral Studies, but that’s based on one polling place in a low turnout election in NH.

I assume most voters spend less than five minutes, but I’d appreciate any information that might be out there, whether empirical studies or even good anecdotal reporting.

Thanks.

Best,

Rick

Richard H. Pildes

Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law

NYU School of Law

40 Washington Square So.

NYC, NY 10014

212 998-6377

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