Bill Addressing Election Disruptions Awaits Action by New York Governor
By: Joseph T. Burns and Claire Woynerowski
Before ending their 2026 legislative session, the New York State Assembly and Senate approved bill A5846/S4602, a proposal to establish remedies in the event of disruptions in voting during an election. The bill greatly expands the options available for disruptions in voting from what currently exists in the New York State Election Law.
At present, the Election Law allows local and state boards of elections to schedule an additional day of voting in the event of a “fire, earthquake, tornado, explosion, power failure, act of sabotage, enemy attack or other disaster" and less than 25% of registered voters cast a ballot. Outside of those specifically designated events, poll site disruptions must be litigated, generally after the election has already passed.
The bill passed by the legislature is intended to eliminate slow-moving judicial intervention where possible, requiring instead that state and local boards of elections extend voting hours proportionally by the amount of time of any voting disruption exceeding an hour. According to the sponsor’s memo of the bill, its primary purpose is to provide a “rapid response solution to address natural or human-caused incidents that interrupt voting at poll sites.” Considering that “disruption” is defined in the proposed bill as “an obstruction or interruption at a polling place” that causes voting to stop for more than an hour, the law would provide a remedy to a both vague and expansive category of interruptions.
According to the sponsor’s memo, the section of the Election Law that currently allows for voting extensions in the case of emergencies, Election Law § 3-108, only authorizes boards to remedy these disruptions by providing another day of voting, “failing to contemplate shorter disruptions that do not warrant an additional day but nonetheless suppress turnout.” With the new law in place, boards would be required to extend the hours of voting at the end of the disrupted day or, if that is not feasible, extend the voting hours on another day. The law does stipulate that if the extensions to voting must take place on another day, they shall not be “later than election day.” In other words, though election officials would have discretion to extend voting hours on another day if there was a disruption during early voting, this bill could not be used to create additional days to vote after election day.
The failure of polling officials to notify the boards of elections of a voting disruption exceeding one hour would also presume a violation of Election Law § 17-212, allowing remedies to injured parties in the form of “additional time to cast a ballot” and by making the parties that failed to enforce this act liable for damages.
The proposed legislation would also require that, in the case of extending voting hours due to a disruption, the board would have to notify voters by conspicuously publishing the details of the extension. The law states that the state and local boards of elections must notify “the bipartisan co-executive directors of the state board of elections; the civil rights bureau of the office of the attorney general; and any candidate or committee with candidates or questions appearing on a ballot to be voted upon in any such polling place impacted.” Additionally, the bill requires that “best efforts” be made to inform local media, and that boards of elections are authorized to contact and notify non-partisan civic organizations, including those serving primarily “language-minority communities.”
Finally, this law would prevent any votes cast during these extended time periods from being segregated from other ballots or from being subject “to challenge or judicial review on the basis that such ballots were untimely cast.”
Should it be signed by Governor Hochul, this bill would take effect immediately. It may, therefore, be in effect for the 2026 General Election if delivered to and signed by the Governor before Election Day.
