NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF LEGISLATION submitted in accordance with Assembly Rule III, Sec 1(f)
BILL NUMBER: A5846B
SPONSOR: Gibbs TITLE OF BILL:
An act to amend the election law, in relation to providing a remedy for
election disruptions
PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL:
The purpose of this bill is to provide a remedy for local bipartisan
election officials to extend the time for balloting at impacted polling
places, where a disruption to voting lasts more than one hour.
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
Section one of this bill would add a new section 3-109 to the Election
Law, that would create a default statutory remedy in the event of a poll
site disruption that interrupts voting for more than one hour. When
such disruption occurs, the local board of elections would toll, adjust,
and extend the scheduled time frame for voting on that day by the number
of minutes that were lost due to the disruption and provide a process to
do so. This section would also establish appropriate communication meth-
ods and process to advise the public of a disruption at a polling site
and how long such extension to vote shall be.
Section two of this bill would make conforming changes to section 8-100
of the Election Law.
Section three of this bill would add a new subdivision 3 to section
8-102 of the Election Law to mandate that a polling place coordinator,
election district chairperson, or inspector of election immediately
notify the local board of elections when a significant delay as
described in this act has occurred. Intentional failure to notify would
be considered a violation of 17-212 of Election Law.
Section four of the bill would make a conforming change to paragraph (f)
of subdivision four of section 8-600 of Election Law, in order to permit
a board of elections to relocate an early voting location in the narrow
circumstance of a significant disruption to voting that renders a
location unsafe or unusable, in addition to the existing authorizations
to relocate an early voting location in the event of a disaster or state
of emergency.
Section five of the bill would establish the effective date.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ORIGINAL AND AMENDED VERSION (IF APPLICABLE):
The B-print amendments would increase the threshold for a disruption
remedy to occur from fifteen minutes to one hour. The amendments would
also simplify the communication process for the board of elections and
would remove the ability to deny extending voting time by vote of
commissioners.
JUSTIFICATION:
New York State has made many reforms in recent years to expand access to
voting, protect voter rights, improve transparency in election adminis-
tration, and shore up confidence in democratic institutions, including
the creation of early voting, consolidation of state and federal prima-
ries, voter preregistration, improvements in the absentee balloting
process, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, and more. Our considerable
progress in this arena is undercut, however, by the fact that we have no
rapid response solution to address natural or human-caused incidents
that interrupt voting at poll sites.
Section 3-108 of Election Law, one of few sections of state law to
contemplate this scenario, allows local or state boards of elections to
schedule an additional day of voting in the event of a "fire, earth-
quake, tornado, explosion, power failure, act of sabotage, enemy attack
or other disaster" and where less than 25% of registered voters city or
countywide have voted. Additionally, subdivision four of 8-600 of the
Election Law mandates that polling places be open for eight hours each
day of early voting, and one could argue that a failure to adjust for a
disruption which truncates these eight hours is a violation of the law.
There are four very real problems with the existing protections of 3-108
and 8-600, however. Firstly, there a number of modern day scenarios
which can feasibly impact voting which fall outside of the narrow defi-
nition of disasters described in Election Law 3-108: unreasonably long
lines, medical emergencies, bomb threats, inaccessibility of facilities,
lengthy or large-scale connectivity or equipment malfunctions, flooding
due to a superstorm or torrential downpour, acts of violence, false fire
alarms, and localized emergencies, to name a few. All of these phenomena
have become common in an era of increasingly extreme weather events for
which we are ill-prepared, as well as an era of rising political
violence and polarization. Real life examples of poll site disruptions
in recent years include: a 2022 bomb threat targeting the Jackie Robin-
son Educational Complex in Manhattan's East Harlem neighborhood, which
robbed general election voters of at least two hours of early voting
while the NYPD evacuated the area; a polling place fire in the town of
Champion in Jefferson County during the 2022 primary election; and, most
recently, in October 2023, a technological malfunction affecting e-poll
books that canceled voting on a Saturday morning at every polling
station in Orange County. Notably, both Hu rricane Sandy and the terror-
ist attacks of September 11th, 2001, happened on election days.
Secondly, the provisions of Election Law 3-108 apply only if at least a
quarter of voters city or countywide have not turned out, leaving broad
incentive for bad actors to target a few key election districts in a
close election. Thirdly, 3-108 only permits boards to provide an addi-
tional day of voting, failing to contemplate shorter disruptions that do
not warrant an additional day but nonetheless suppress turnout. And
finally, both 3-108 and 8-600 require local boards of election to proac-
tively take action to remedy disruptions, which they have little incen-
tive to do when at least one party definitionally stands to benefit from
lower voter turnout. Instead, boards typically deadlock along partisan
lines - leaving enforcement of these core tenets of Election Law to
election lawyers, who rush to the courthouse seeking judicial orders and
praying they get them in time.
This bill addresses the lack of incentive that partisan boards of
elections have to extend voting hours by creating a default statutory
remedy for disruptions of more than one hour. Once notified of an inter-
ruption affecting voting, boards would be required to toll and extend
the time of the interruption on the back end of that same day or extend
the hours for a different day if necessary, They would then be required
to publicize the new hours and any change in location.
When the e-poll book glitch shuttered every polling site in Orange Coun-
ty, voters were issued neither emergency paper ballots nor provisional
ballots by which to "fail-safe" vote. While some 'local party officials
requested an extender, no additional time was granted by the board of
elections. Despite the fact that the local board had ample time to
advertise extended hours, they took no steps to account for the lost
time. Instead, voters were advised to wait indefinitely until the poll
site again became operative, or to come back later at an unspecified
time. It is to this date unknown how many voters simply failed to reap-
pear.
This bill fixes the political problem that prevents local boards from
extending hours at poll sites while disincentivizing bad actors who wish
to target certain segments of the electorate to suppress a vote. It
provides an objective, evenly applied yet narrowly tailored default
remedy that will automatically ensure a significant disruption at a poll
site does not wind up robbing the electorate of their ability to exer-
cise a basic civil right.
The remedy of a time extender is already familiar to election officials,
campaign counsel, and voter protection advocates across the country and
is routinely sought and granted by judges where appropriate. But rather
than squander critical additional time and resources awaiting judicial
intervention, this relief can be provided automatically, in real time,
based on information readily available to elections personnel. 'It is a
commonsense solution to address unanticipated incidents that, by design
or happenstance, serve to distort electoral outcomes and infringe upon
civil rights.
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
2025-2026: A5846-A (Gibbs)- Referred to Election Law; S4602-A
(Gounardes) Reported and Committed to Finance
2023-2024: A8581 (Gibbs) - Referred to Election Law; S7856 (Gounardes)
Referred to Elections
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:
To be determined.
EFFECTIVE DATE:
This act would take effect immediately.
STATE OF NEW YORK
________________________________________________________________________
5846--B
2025-2026 Regular Sessions
IN ASSEMBLY
February 24, 2025
___________
Introduced by M. of A. GIBBS, SIMONE, LEVENBERG, LAVINE, DAVILA, REYES,
R. CARROLL, SEAWRIGHT, PAULIN, CUNNINGHAM, SHRESTHA, BURROUGHS,
TAYLOR, GALLAGHER, SIMON, CRUZ, SHIMSKY, VALDEZ, ZINERMAN, RAGA,
ROSENTHAL -- read once and referred to the Committee on Election Law
-- committee discharged, bill amended, ordered reprinted as amended
and recommitted to said committee -- recommitted to the Committee on
Election Law in accordance with Assembly Rule 3, sec. 2 -- committee
discharged, bill amended, ordered reprinted as amended and recommitted
to said committee
AN ACT to amend the election law, in relation to providing a remedy for
election disruptions
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assem-bly, do enact as follows:
1 Section 1. The election law is amended by adding a new section 3-109
2 to read as follows:
3 § 3-109. Disruption; additional time for voting; publicity of remedy.
4 1. (a) In the event that early voting or election day voting at one or
5 more polling places is disrupted prior to the close of polls on any day
6 of election for a duration exceeding one hour, the board of elections
7 shall toll, adjust, and extend the scheduled timeframe for voting on
8 that day of election to account for the lost time to voters of all such
9 impacted election districts. For the purposes of this section,
10 "disruption" shall mean an obstruction or interruption at a polling
11 place that causes voters of at least one election district to be unable
12 to vote for a period of time exceeding one hour during a scheduled time-
13 frame for voting.
14 (b) Pursuant to paragraph (a) of this subdivision, in the event of a
15 disruption to early voting or election day voting at one or more polling
16 places, such scheduled timeframe for voting shall be tolled, beginning
17 from the actual time of commencement of the disruption to voting, or, if
18 such actual time is not agreed upon by the board of elections commis-
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[] is old law to be omitted.
LBD07308-09-6
A. 5846--B 2
1 sioners, beginning at the latest from the time a report of such delay or
2 disruption is first electronically transmitted or telephonically commu-
3 nicated to the board of elections. Such tolling shall continue until
4 such time as the disruption to voting has ended and the impacted polling
5 places have reopened for voting, or the time for the scheduled close of
6 polls on that day of election, whichever occurs first. The scheduled
7 timeframe for voting shall then be adjusted, accordingly, for each such
8 polling place, and extended on that day of election, or, if extending
9 the timeframe for voting at such polling places on that day of election,
10 would be administratively impracticable, such additional time for voting
11 shall be scheduled on the next day for voting or a successive day for
12 voting scheduled for the same election, but not later than election day,
13 in the same polling place or, if such polling place is unavailable, at
14 alternative locations that may be designated as polling places pursuant
15 to the provisions of section 4-104 of this chapter and is, to the extent
16 practicable, in close proximity to the disrupted polling places, to
17 account for the lost time at all such impacted polling places.
18 (c) In any polling place in which a voting machine or voting system
19 was used prior to a disruption, such machine or system shall be used for
20 the additional time for voting unless found to be inoperable, in which
21 case the provisions of section 7-120 of this chapter shall apply.
22 Except as directed by the board of elections, the original seal on such
23 machines shall not be removed nor shall the machines be unlocked until
24 the reopening of the polls and the board of elections shall provide
25 additional seals as necessary to be used as soon as the polls are closed
26 on such day. The state board of elections shall promulgate rules and/or
27 regulations to ensure the fair, transparent, and uniform administration
28 of this section.
29 2. (a) In the event that the scheduled timeframe for early voting or
30 election day voting at one or more polling places is extended pursuant
31 to subdivision one of this section, the board of elections shall, in
32 coordination with the state board of elections, make use of all reason-
33 able means and channels of communications to publicize the polling plac-
34 es impacted, indicating the duration and timeframe of any such corre-
35 sponding extension, including a conspicuous written notice posted
36 outside of such impacted polling place. At a minimum, such information
37 shall be made available publicly on the state and local board of
38 elections' websites and communicated electronically or telephonically to
39 the following:
40 (i) the bipartisan co-executive directors of the state board of
41 elections;
42 (ii) the civil rights bureau of the office of the attorney general;
43 and
44 (iii) any candidate or committee with candidates or questions appear-
45 ing on a ballot to be voted upon in any such polling place impacted, or
46 the designated agent of such candidate or committee.
47 (b) The state or local board of elections shall employ best efforts to
48 inform local media, and are authorized to inform local news media organ-
49 izations and non-partisan civic organizations and community-based groups
50 including media and civic organizations primarily serving prevalent
51 language-minority communities, and utilize free or paid traditional,
52 website, and social media channels and networks, including official
53 advisory or public notification tools or websites made available by the
54 impacted county or municipalities to inform the voting public of the
55 corresponding extension and the remaining opportunities to vote.
A. 5846--B 3
1 3. Any ballots cast by eligible voters during an extended timeframe
2 for voting shall not be segregated from other ballots cast by eligible
3 voters or subject to challenge or judicial review on the basis that such
4 ballots were untimely cast; provided, however, that this subdivision
5 shall not prejudice the right of any registered voter eligible to vote
6 at such a disrupted polling place, or any candidate or committee with
7 candidates or questions appearing on a ballot to be voted upon in any
8 such polling place, to seek independent judicial relief for an order
9 extending the timeframe for voting pursuant to subdivision one of this
10 section.
11 § 2. Subdivision 2 of section 8-100 of the election law, as separately
12 amended by chapter 6 and section 1 of part BBB of chapter 55 of the laws
13 of 2019, is amended to read as follows:
14 2. Polls shall be open for voting during the following hours: a prima-
15 ry election from six o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock in the
16 evening; the general election from six o'clock in the morning until nine
17 o'clock in the evening; a special election called by the governor pursu-
18 ant to the public officers law, and, except as otherwise provided by
19 law, every other election, from six o'clock in the morning until nine
20 o'clock in the evening; early voting hours shall be as provided in title
21 six of this article. Early voting times shall be as provided in section
22 8-600 of this article. In the event of a disruption to voting, the board
23 of elections is authorized to toll, adjust, and extend the timeframe for
24 voting pursuant to section 3-109 of this chapter.
25 § 3. Section 8-102 of the election law is amended by adding a new
26 subdivision 3 to read as follows:
27 3. In the event that early voting or election day voting for one or
28 more election districts or poll sites is disrupted prior to the close of
29 polls on any day of election for a duration exceeding one hour, the
30 polling place coordinator, election district chairperson, or, if such
31 persons are unavailable, any inspector of election, shall immediately
32 notify the board of elections. There shall be a presumption of a
33 violation of subdivision one of section 17-212 of this chapter when any
34 person, by commission or omission, intentionally frustrates the purposes
35 of this section.
36 § 4. Paragraph (f) of subdivision 4 of section 8-600 of the election
37 law, as added by chapter 480 of the laws of 2023, is amended to read as
38 follows:
39 (f) If the location of an early voting polling place as designated
40 pursuant to paragraph (e) of this subdivision changes prior to such
41 early voting period, notice shall be provided to all affected eligible
42 voters no later than five days prior to such voting period in accordance
43 with the communication plan established pursuant to subdivision five of
44 this section or as soon as practicable if such location change occurs
45 within five days of the commencement of such early voting period;
46 provided, however, no such location change may occur within forty-eight
47 hours of such commencement unless there is any disaster within the mean-
48 ing of section 3-108 of this chapter or disruption within the meaning of
49 section 3-109 of this chapter or a declared state of emergency by the
50 governor or any court of competent jurisdiction in the county where the
51 polling place is located.
52 § 5. This act shall take effect immediately.
