{"id":344562,"date":"2026-09-12T01:16:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T01:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/344562\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T01:16:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T01:16:13","slug":"advocates-push-for-time-extender-bill-to-be-signed-into-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/344562\/","title":{"rendered":"Advocates push for time extender bill to be signed into law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sept. 11 has a double meaning for voting rights groups in the Empire State.<\/p>\n<p>The attacks happened on a historic primary Election Day in New York City that was halted when terrorists struck.<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of the upcoming midterm elections this year, voting rights groups statewide are pressuring Gov. Kathy Hochul to sign a measure into law that will extend the time polling locations are open if something happens to delay voting.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat horrible tragedy stopped voting in New York City, and the election had to be rescheduled,\u201d said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York. \u201cSept. 11 for us has double significance. It was a horrible tragedy and it interfered with voting. It\u2019s really appropriate for us to be talking about the need for the governor to sign this bill. Let\u2019s have it in place for our November 2026 elections.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Democratic state Sen. Andrew Gounardes sponsored this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nysenate.gov\/legislation\/bills\/2025\/S4602\/amendment\/A\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">bill<\/a> in his chamber.<\/p>\n<p>It passed the state Legislature this past session.<\/p>\n<p>Gounardes explains its intent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt should be an automatic extension of time any time there\u2019s a delay of more than one hour,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, if a poll site is inaccessible for more than an hour, machines are down for more than an hour, if, god forbid, ICE agents take over a polling location this November and prevent people from voting for more than an hour, we should automatically extend the time the polling site is open by that hour.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gounardes said an exception is if voters didn\u2019t lose their ability to vote during the interruption.<\/p>\n<p>Typically, when a situation arises that interrupts voting, Gounardes said the local board of elections has to decide to extend the time to allow people to make up for the delay.<\/p>\n<p>He said this is a \u201csafe way\u201d to guarantee that time isn\u2019t lost, and people don\u2019t lose time to vote.<\/p>\n<p>Advocates say it will bring \u201cuniformity,\u201d but express some boards of elections have raised concerns some polling sites may be open later than others in their county.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy response to that is that it happens already,\u201d said Lerner. \u201cIf there\u2019s a long line at a polling place at 9pm that polling places has got to stay open.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Spectrum News 1 reached out to the New York State Board of Elections for comment.<\/p>\n<p>The board said it isn\u2019t commenting on \u201cpending legislation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The governor\u2019s office tells Spectrum News 1 she will \u201creview this legislation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sept. 11 has a double meaning for voting rights groups in the Empire State. The attacks happened on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[206,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,5304,112,108,87,200],"class_list":["post-344562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-albany-capital-region","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-nicole-neuman","tag-ny-state-of-politics","tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","tag-politics","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}