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Tex. Elec. Code § 61.003

ELECTIONEERING AND LOITERING NEAR POLLING PLACE

Applied in 5 court decisions — leading case In Re Attorney General's "Directive on Exit Polling: Media & Non-Partisan Public Interest Groups," (2009)

Most recently applied in Ostrewich v. Nelson (June 2023)

Acts 1985, 69th Leg., ch. 211, Sec. 1, eff

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Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

(a) A person commits an offense if, during the voting period and within 100 feet of an outside door through which a voter may enter the building in which a polling place is located or within 20 feet of a parking space designated for curbside voting under Section 64.009, the person:

(1) loiters; or

(2) electioneers for or against any candidate, measure, or political party.

(a-1) The entity that owns or controls a public building being used as a polling place may not, at any time during the voting period, prohibit electioneering on the building's premises outside of the area described in Subsection (a), but may enact reasonable regulations concerning the time, place, and manner of electioneering.

(b) In this section:

(1) "Electioneering" includes the posting, use, or distribution of political signs or literature. The term does not include the distribution of a notice of a party convention authorized under Section 172.1114.

(2) "Voting period" means the period beginning when the polls open for voting and ending when the polls close or the last voter has voted, whichever is later.

(c) An offense under this section is a Class C misdemeanor.

Official source: Texas Constitution and Statutes. Reproduced from public-domain Texas statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.