**By Vinita Singla, Megan McGibney**
Don't wear your favorite Barack Obama T-shirt or your shiny John McCain campaign button Nov. 4: You might get hassled at the polls.
An obscure, seldom-enforced state law bars anyone from wearing political buttons and other campaign paraphernalia within "a 100-foot radial measured from the entrances of the voting booth."
With the election just over a month away, the law is suddenly gaining notice: an email begging potential Obama voters to "PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE" leave T-shirts and buttons home on Election Day is circulating on the Internet -- spurring worried calls and emails to state election officials. The New York Civil Liberties Union plans -- for the first time -- to include a similar warning in its voter information materials.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders in Pennsylvania are calling on officials to enforce that state's similar "passive electioneering" law banning campaign paraphernalia at the polls, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Sept. 19.
In New York, election officials said they would stick to the law even as they tried to downplay concerns.
No Jail Worries
"No one will be thrown in jail over a shirt at the polls," said state Board of Elections spokesman Bob Brehm, whose office has been bombarded by calls and emails from worried voters.
But Brehm noted that anyone wearing a campaign button or T-shirt will be asked to remove the item.
Jason Weingartner, executive director of the New York Republican County Committee, said the law is a good one - as long as it's consistently applied. "It doesn't put undue pressure on individual voters who are exercising their constitutional rights," he said.
City Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) agreed, but added that in his experience the law "isn't as strictly enforced as it should be."
Palyn Hung, a NYCLU staff attorney, said her group is including warnings about the law on its voters' rights cards.
"We're not saying you're absolutely prohibited (from wearing campaign paraphernalia), but we're advising people that they might not be allowed to go in" to the polls, she said.
History of Lax Enforcement
While election and party officials are familiar with the law, the general public isn't. Voters wearing campaign buttons to the polls largely have been ignored for years, said David Epstein, a political science professor at Columbia University.
The law "is generally not enforced in New York or it's enforced unevenly. Sometimes, they'll let you wear bumper stickers though they will definitely kick you out if you start soliciting people," he said.
New York City Board of Elections Executive Director Marcus Cederqvist, though, recalled a long-ago brush with poll workers.
"I was forced to remove a button once," he said.
Steve Richman, the city Board of Elections' general counsel, said the law is at least three decades old - and carries a penalty for those who refuse to comply.
"It's a misdemeanor -- seven months to a year in jail," said Richman.
No one, though, could remember anyone being put behind bars for wearing a campaign button to the New York polls. But some officials recalled voters who went to extreme measures to try to evade the law.
"One year, a voter brought in a sheet cake with a candidate's name and an inspector smeared the name with a knife," said Helen Kiggins, the commissioner of elections in upstate Onondaga County.
Phone and email messages left with the Obama campaign did not get an immediate response. Peter Feldman, a McCain campaign spokesman in New York and New Jersey said, "We are okay with the law."
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This post originally appeared at NYCity News Service.
Joe Scarborough: Election Night Preview: GDP Trumps Gay Marriage
All the president's men know that a Republican sweep in New Jersey and Virginia will strike fear in the hearts of those swing state Democrats who now hold the future of health care in their sweaty moderate hands.
Am I wrong?
I'm a poll worker, And A Democrat, AND A FERVENT SUPPORTER OF SENATOR OBAMA, and I fully support the BAN on wearing POLITICAL t-shirts, camapign buttons, etc., INSIDE A POLLING PLACE; or, as it is here in AZ, within 75' of the entrance to a polling site.
You're free to wear your t-shirts and buttons, AND CAMPAIGN, outside of whatever barrier limit is established by your state's electioneering law, so your First Amendment right to Free Speech is NOT be trampled upon. We're going to have enough problems on Election Day without having to deal with the inevitible brouhahas that would erupt if folks were allowed to wear their McCain or Obama 'chum' inside the polling places.
If ANY of you were a poll worker on a regular basis, you would understand why such bans are in place and ALWAYS enforced. the column writer's claim that thse bans are "obscure laws" is a FALSEHOOD -- poll workers are trained before each and every election to NOT allow electioneering within the designated limit.
In 2004, I had to ask a huffy Republican to cover up her (ugly!) Bush-Cheney '04 PURSE; and I'll probably do likewise on this Nov. 4th... and I'll enforce the rule FAIRLY and CONSISTENTLY.
If you don't like it, don't go vote. THAT will 'teach us,' huh?
(jeesh... get a life!)
Hopefully the local Dems all over the US will invest in a pile of cheap white t-shirts of varying sizes to pass out to offenders as necessary. I'm bringing a sweatshirt with me to the polls to help out, too (I'm a pollworker and I'm on the tables all day, from before 7am until we close).
But your comment seems to contradict itself. You say:
"If ANY of you were a poll worker on a regular basis"
pointing out that this is part of your training, and you probably would agree that most people aren't regular poll workers. Then you say:
he column writer's claim that thse bans are "obscure laws" is a FALSEHOOD -- poll workers are trained before each and every election to NOT allow electioneering within the designated limit.
Basically proving the point, that these laws are "obscure" to the average voter, who isn't trained to be a poll worker.
So get off your high horse as a poll worker and realize that these laws aren't common knowledge to the citizenry, and that this article is providing a service by raising that awareness before election day to some the process, and limit the number of people that you must remind at the poll.