No path pictured for polling place photogs

Close up of photographer pointing DSLR camera at screen, blue background. Panorama

Sorry, shutterbugs.

Legislation that would have allowed photography in polling places under select circumstances is dead for 2025, despite bipartisan sponsorship.

SB 1170/HB 109, sponsored in their respective legislative bodies by Sen. Clay Yarborough and Rep. Kim Daniels, was temporarily postponed in the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee this week.

That would have been the Senate version’s first committee hearing of three to which it was assigned, but it wasn’t heard ultimately because the House version had no path, Yarborough shared Saturday.

So the TP is really a PP: a permanent postponement, at least for 2025.

The bill would have allowed “members of the public to photograph in a polling room or early voting area before the polls open and after the polls close when voting has ended,” while banning “the mounting of any camera or recording device that remains inside a polling room or early voting area during the time any voter is voting.”