House Rejects Reduced Poll Hours
by Ed Anderson - Times-Picayune (excerpt)

BATON ROUGE -- A compromise bill to reduce election day voting from 14 to 13 hours was rejected by the House on a vote of 59-41 Wednesday.

House Bill 34 by Rep. Kay Kellogg Katz, R-Monroe, is dead for the session, but there are other versions of the legislation still alive. Katz's bill started out to cut the present voting hours of 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The bill was changed in committee to set the hours from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. That was the proposal rejected by the House.

Katz, who has sponsored similar legislation for at least the past five general sessions, said that studies show only 1.5 percent of the voters cast their ballots the first hour polls are open. Even at 13 hours, she said, Louisiana would have some of the longest polling hours in the nation.

Katz, who works as a poll commissioner, said election days stretch to 16 hours for commissioners who prepare the voting precinct before polls open and have to stay late to send vote totals to election officials after the polls close. She said most of the states in the South have 12-hour voting days.

Katz argued that with proposed longer hours to cast early ballots and a longer early voting period of nine days, the one-hour reduction would not penalize voters.