We study the effect of latency on binary-choice opinion formation models.
Latency is introduced into the models as an additional dynamic rule: after a
voter changes its opinion, it enters a waiting period of stochastic length
where no further changes take place. We first focus on the voter model and show
that as a result of introducing latency, the average magnetization is not
conserved, and the system is driven toward zero magnetization, independently of
initial conditions. The model is studied analytically in the mean-field case
and by simulations in one dimension. We also address the behavior of the
Majority Rule model with added latency, and show that the competition between
imitation and latency leads to a rich phenomenology
