New Jersey is the only state to keep exit pollsters and journalists from approaching voters within 100 feet of a polling place.

 

Joan Beil signs her voting ticket before she votes in April in Bridgewater. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruling this week that bars exit polling within 100 feet of polling places is unlikely to stand, according to legal experts.

 

Ten states have tried to ban exit polling close to polling places and, in each case, a federal court rejected the ban, saying that exit polling is one activity allowed near polling places. The state Supreme Court acknowledged the federal rulings, but said it disagreed.

Experts say error rates are higher with such buffers in place.

 

"Exit polls provide accurate data about voter behavior because of the near certainty that persons interviewed have actually voted," Joseph Lenski, co-founder and executive vice president of Edison Media Research, said last year when Minnesota tried to create a 100-foot buffer zone.

 

Edison Media Research, based in New Jersey, helped run exit polls during the 2008 presidential race for the National Election Pool — a consortium that includes The Associated Press, CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC and CBS.

 

Both the quality and quantity of the information decreases significantly because interviewers are supposed to approach voters in a preset pattern, such as every fourth voter. As the distance from polling places increases, Lenski said, so does the likelihood that a voter gets into their car without being approached or blends into a crowd that includes people who didn't vote.

 

In Minnesota, where exit pollsters were kept 100 feet away from some polling sites during elections in 2004 and 2006, error rates were four times higher, according to Lenski.

 

In the case that led to this week's ruling, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey petitioned the attorney general for permission to hand out wallet-size voter-rights card. The state denied the request, saying such an exemption would allow political groups inside the perimeter.

 

The ACLU appealed and, on Wednesday, the state Supreme Court denied its request. The court took the extra step of barring all form of "expressive activity," including exit polling.

 

The court noted that political speech is protected by the First Amendment but can be barred near a polling station to protect the right to vote.

 

"The last 100 feet leading to a polling place belong to the voters on Election Day," the court wrote.

 

Poll-watchers and other observers will not be allowed inside the zone, making it the most far-reaching ban ever instituted, said Catherine Weiss, a lawyer for the New Jersey Public Advocate's office.

 

"They've read the New Jersey statute to say there is a 100-foot cone of silence around the polling place," said ACLU-NJ president Frank Corrado.

 

The ACLU has not decided whether to appeal. New Jersey's gubernatorial election on Nov. 3 would be affected.