Are Ballot Selfies Illegal? List Of States Where Laws Allow You To Take Photos While Voting

An Election Day snap might be social media gold, but it might also land you in legal trouble. It's against the law to take ballot selfies — or, for that matter, any picture of your ballot, whether it's absentee or at the polling place — in 18 states, according to a recent roundup by the Associated Press.

In the era of "pics or it didn't happen," ballot selfies are ridiculously tempting. Just ask former *NSYNC member Justin Timberlake, who had to delete his voting photo last week after realizing taking pictures and videos inside polling places is illegal in Tennessee.

But they're also controversial. Critics say voting should be private, and forbidding pictures prevents people from buying votes and requesting photographic proof, the New York Times reported. Proponents argue it's free speech and can increase turnout, especially among internet-savvy millennials.

Snapchat itself got involved in a lawsuit concerning the legality of ballot selfies in New Hampshire earlier this year.

"By publishing ballot selfies, the media enhances, rather than subverts, our democratic process: The ballot selfie captures the very essence of that [political] process as it happens — the pulled lever, the filled-in bubble, the punched-out chad — and thus dramatizes the power that one person has to influence our government," it wrote in an April amicus brief.

Before you click that digital shutter, read on to see what the laws are in your state.

You can take a ballot selfie in Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington, D.C. and Wyoming, according to the AP.

You cannot take a ballot selfie in Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota or Wisconsin.

In the rest of the states, it's unclear. As the Washington Post wrote, "the answer to the question 'Can I take a selfie with my ballot?' is basically some degree of ¯_(ツ)_/¯." In Arizona, for example, you can't take photos at the polling place but you can snap your absentee ballot. In Oklahoma, ballot selfies are technically illegal but there are no consequences, according to Vox. In New York, a lawsuit is pending and could be decided by Election Day.

Bottom line? If you subscribe to the idea of better safe than sorry, you should probably just share a selfie with your "I Voted" sticker instead.