A principle of effective election administration is that the location of a voting station should not provide an advantage or a disadvantage to any political party or group. The voter registration exercise can help in choosing fair and politically neutral locations for voting stations. Following are ways in which voter registration may influence voting location:
- Sometimes the voters’ list is used to determine the size and, to a certain extent, the boundaries of electoral districts. Often the number of voters per electoral district must fall within a specified range, although other factors may be taken into account, such as the representation of communities of interest, other geographic boundaries (e.g. state or provincial lines), or perhaps the assignment of a fixed minimum number of seats to a sub-national unit in the legislature. Instead of the voters’ list, sometimes electoral districts are based on data from a population census;
- Within electoral districts, the voters’ list may be used to identify the required number of voting stations and to help choose locations. The number of voting stations in an area will be a function of the number of eligible voters and the estimated time it takes to vote, allowing for the likelihood that voter traffic will be heavier at certain times of the day; and
- If registration is conducted through door-to-door registration, the registration officers may be able to provide information about possible locations for voting stations. Registration officers must walk through their assigned area within an electoral district. Since they often are drawn from the geographic community where they serve, they may be able to offer a fuller understanding of the community’s configuration, and of the ease or difficulty in accessing various parts of the community. Seeking registration officers’ advice on the location of voting stations is a way of putting to use the strategic information they gather in discharging their duties.
