Definition
A challenge to the polls is an objection made by a party to the inclusion of a specific individual juror (or jurors) on a jury panel. It is a challenge directed at particular persons named on the jury roll, as distinguished from a challenge to the array, which attacks the entire panel on grounds of procedural irregularity in how the jury was summoned or assembled.
The purpose of a challenge to the polls is to ensure that each juror who sits on a case is impartial and legally qualified. A party exercising this challenge asserts that a named individual should be excluded from service on grounds personal to that juror.
Common Confusion
CHALLENGE TO THE POLLS vs. CHALLENGE TO THE ARRAY: These two forms of jury challenge are frequently conflated in older sources and casual usage. A challenge to the array attacks the whole panel — the process or officer by which jurors were summoned — and succeeds or fails for the entire venire. A challenge to the polls targets one or more individual jurors and leaves the rest of the panel intact. A researcher encountering the unqualified word "challenge" in historical trial records must determine from context which form is meant.
CHALLENGE TO THE POLLS vs. PEREMPTORY CHALLENGE: A challenge to the polls is the broader category and includes both challenges for cause and, in older usage, peremptory challenges. Modern practice has narrowed the term so that "challenge to the polls" most often signals a challenge for cause in contemporary sources, while "peremptory challenge" is treated as its own distinct term of art. Historical sources may use challenge to the polls to encompass both.
Core Elements
Burrill, following Coke and Blackstone, organizes the grounds for principal challenges to the polls under four heads derived from Lord Coke's treatment in Co. Litt. 156a:
1. PROPTER HONORIS RESPECTUM — on account of the juror's rank or honor (e.g., a peer of the realm was exempted from common jury service).
2. PROPTER DEFECTUM — on account of some legal defect in the juror, such as alienage, infancy, lack of property qualification, or similar disqualification.
3. PROPTER AFFECTUM — on account of partiality or bias, either presumed by law from the juror's relationship to a party, or shown in fact.
4. PROPTER DELICTUM — on account of the juror's prior conviction for an infamous offense rendering the juror incompetent to serve.
These four heads governed common-law analysis for centuries and remain the conceptual skeleton beneath modern for-cause challenge doctrine, even where the specific categories (such as property qualifications) have been abolished.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
PRINCIPAL CHALLENGE TO THE POLLS: A challenge resting on a ground that the law presumes sufficient to disqualify — no supporting evidence or discretionary finding required. If the ground is established, the juror must be removed.
CHALLENGE TO THE POLLS FOR FAVOR: A challenge resting on circumstances that suggest partiality but do not rise to a legal presumption. Determined by triers (in older practice, two indifferent persons appointed to assess the challenge) rather than automatically granted.
PEREMPTORY CHALLENGE (historical usage): Older authorities treated the peremptory challenge as a subset of challenge to the polls — a challenge requiring no stated cause, available to the defendant as of right up to a fixed number. Modern practice treats peremptory challenges separately.
Why It Matters in Research
The term "challenge to the polls" is predominantly a historical and common-law term. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century trial records, treatises, or appellate opinions will encounter it regularly; modern sources have largely replaced it with "challenge for cause" or simply "juror challenge."
The Latin and Law French equivalents — in capita and à les testes — appear in older case reports and must be recognized as synonyms. Burrill flags both. A researcher scanning digitized reports from English or early American courts may encounter these phrases without translation and need to understand they refer to challenges against individual jurors.
The four Cokean heads (propter honoris respectum, propter defectum, propter affectum, propter delictum) are organizing concepts that reappear across treatise literature — Blackstone, Coke on Littleton, and American adaptations. Understanding that modern for-cause challenge doctrine descends from propter affectum (bias) and propter defectum (legal disqualification) helps a researcher trace doctrinal continuity across the common-law period.
Jurisdictional variation matters here: American states abolished most property and rank-based qualifications (propter honori respectum and much of propter defectum) through constitutional and statutory reform in the nineteenth century. A researcher comparing challenge grounds across periods should not assume that grounds available in English practice were equally available in American courts, or that grounds recognized in one state's statutes apply in another.
The distinction between principal challenges and challenges for favor has practical research significance in older records because the procedure was different — challenges for favor required appointment of triers, generating a separate procedural record that principal challenges did not.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry is characteristically economical but technically precise. It defines the challenge correctly as an exception to individuals (as opposed to the array), cites the standard authorities (Termes de la Ley, Co. Litt. 156a, 3 Bl. Com. 361), and gestures at Coke's four-head classification without completing it — the entry appears to have been truncated in the source material at "propter honori," presumably continuing with the full four categories in the original.
Blackstone (3 Bl. Com. 361) is the most accessible full treatment of the common-law doctrine and expands on all four heads. Coke on Littleton (156a) is the primary authority underlying both Blackstone and Burrill. Researchers should treat Burrill here as a reliable pointer to these sources rather than a self-contained treatment.
No significant divergence among historical authorities on the basic definition exists — the term was stable. What varied across authorities was the weight given to each category and the procedural mechanics of challenge for favor.
Jurisdictional Note
Modern American practice has largely replaced challenge to the polls as a term with "challenge for cause" (governed by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 24 and state equivalents) and separately regulated peremptory challenges. The substantive grounds have been significantly reshaped — property qualifications are gone, rank-based exemptions are gone, and the bias standard under propter affectum has been constitutionalized through Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment doctrine. English and Commonwealth jurisdictions retain closer terminological continuity with the historical common-law vocabulary.