Basic criteria for determining how many voting locations will be required to accommodate the expected numbers of voters and where they are best located, will include:
• legal or administrative directions on the placement of voting sites within electoral district or voting subdivision boundaries;
• voting station capacity, i.e., the numbers of voters that a voting station can service;
• accessibility and service standards for voting.
Providing Service to a Defined Geographic Area
There may be legal restrictions as to the placement of voting stations in relation to electoral districts or voting subdivisions of electoral districts. It would be usual that electoral districts be divided into voting subdivisions, each of which must contain a voting site.
Definition of these voting subdivisions' boundaries would normally be better left to the discretion of electoral management bodies, on administrative grounds, rather than become part of any determination of electoral representation boundaries.
Appropriate voter populations of voting subdivisions, their boundaries, and, hence, the numbers of voters that voting stations must service must be determined early in the election timetable for effective planning of staffing, materials supply, and logistics.
There are different approaches to defining appropriately-sized voting subdivisions. One approach is to break each electoral district into geographic areas, or voting subdivisions, containing nearly equal numbers of registered voters.
Such an approach allows for standardisation of staffing levels and materials supply and can thus provide a simple and effective basis for voting operations resource allocation and service. While simple, this approach may present accessibility problems, particularly in areas of lower population density.
A modification of this method would be to set varying maximum voter populations for voting subdivisions according to societal and geographic factors--at different levels for urban and rural environments, or between areas of higher and lower literacy. Maximum flexibility can be gained if voting station areas are determined purely on local criteria.
This will allow maximum effectiveness to be gained for available local facilities, but can lead to widely varying numbers of voters serviced by voting stations and thus increases
the complexity of planning and resourcing.
Some legal frameworks allow voters a choice of attending any voting site within a larger geographic area, often an electoral district for which a representative is being chosen at the election.
This may have advantages in flexibility and accessibility for voters, but drawbacks may include:
• the uncertainty of where voters may attend to vote under such systems greatly increases the complexity of planning appropriate locations and resourcing of voting stations and has the potential for resulting in excessive costs;
• such systems will require more complex and perhaps less effective procedures for preventing multiple voting and establishing eligibility of voters.
Voting Station Capacity Criteria
The number of voters that a voting station can reasonably accommodate will depend on a variety of environment-specific factors.
There is no ideal capacity for a voting station that can be applied to all election environments. In some measure, prescribed voting station capacities reflect the philosophy of the voting system, whether it aims to promote a sense of local community participation through provision of smaller-sized neighbourhood voting stations or to gain efficiencies through more impersonal, larger voting stations.
Equally significant for determining voting station processing capacities are the interdependent operational factors that will influence voting station effectiveness, such as:
• the hours during which voting stations will be open;
• the range of services to be provided, both in terms of voting facilities required by the legal framework and additional services provided to assist voters;
• the complexity of the voting procedures;
• whether a single election or multiple simultaneous elections are being held;
• the procedures for checking voter eligibility and issuing voting material to voters;
• the physical area available for voting and whether this is a single room or is broken into multiple smaller spaces;
• the way in which the physical layout of the voting station is arranged, and particularly the number of voting compartments that are provided;
• the availability and abilities of suitable staff for both voting station management and other voting station official positions;
• the service standards for voter traffic that have been set by the electoral management body;
• voter fraud control (in smaller, neighbourhood-based voting, most eligible voters will be known to officials and observers and opportunities for voter fraud more limited);
• how familiar and experienced voters are with the voting procedures;
• the structure of the local voting population, particularly in terms of age and literacy in the official language to be used for voting.
Voting station processing capacities will be more limited where they deal with a single stream of voters.
Conversely, depending on the physical area of the voting station, using multiple voting streams (either based on voters lists for geographic sub-districts, an alphabetical split of voters, or having multiple copies of voters lists available for voting), can greatly increase voting station capacity
General Standards
There are some general standards which can provide useful reference points:
• While there are economies of scale in larger capacity voting stations, voter traffic of 4000-5000 voters is likely to lead to problems in voting station management.
• Conversely, very small voting stations, with voter traffic of under 300-400 voters, are generally an inefficient use of resources and should only be considered where they are required to provide voting accessibility to voters in more isolated areas or where an electoral district's voter population is low.
• Traffic in the range of 1200 to 2500 voters per voting station will generally offer a reasonable level of efficiency, yet not be too unwieldy for staff of average ability to manage. However, the ability to service this number of voters will be dependent on the issues noted below.
Service Criteria
Sites chosen as voting locations need to meet basic criteria to ensure that they are able to effectively service voters and that they are conducive to the conduct of a free and fair election. The basic factors that need to be considered in choosing specific locations include the following:
The ability of the site to cope with the expected number of voters: The physical capacity of the location to cope with both the total number of expected voters, and the likely peak periods of operation, require assessment.
The accessibility of the site to voters, party/candidate representatives and observers: Accessibility must be a paramount consideration. Having to travel long distances or for long periods to their nearest voting station will be a deterrent for voters to attend to vote, particularly where transportation may not be readily available.
Considerations in this regard would include the condition and number of roads servicing the voting station, the availability and frequency of public transport services, and in urban areas, the availability of parking. Locating voting stations in restricted areas, such as military bases, that may prove difficult to observe freely, should generally be avoided.
Special care needs to be taken that voting sites are accessible to voters with disabilities, both in access to and condition of premises and their location. For example, in environments with few transport facilities where voters will generally walk to a voting station, location of voting sites at the summit of steep hills can inconvenience elderly or frail voters.
The safety and security of voters, election staff, and party/candidate representatives: The ability to ensure that a voting site and its environs are safe assumes great importance in situations where there has been recent or there is current violent political conflict. In such situations, perceptions of how safe the voting site is for those of particular political views or community groups will have a large effect on voter turnout and hence the legitimacy of the election .
Familiarity: Voters will be more easily able to find voting stations if they are in prominent locations.
Wherever possible, sites that have been used previously for voting stations should continue to be used, unless they have negative connotations through connections with former repressive regimes or no longer meet capacity/facilities standards.
This is particularly useful in areas with multiple layers of government which have different voting days; using the same sites for elections at the national, provincial, and local levels will minimise voter confusion and make public information campaigns on voting locations easier.
Where elections are preceded by a locally-based intensive voter registration campaign, early identification and use of voting sites as a local registration office within each voting subdivision will aid voters in their recognition of the correct voting station to attend.
The acceptability of the site to voters: Certain state agency sites such as police premises may not be acceptable as voting locations to the local community.
The ability to supply the voting site with voting materials: Logistics considerations need to include the condition of transportation infrastructure. If there is no suitable road network for delivery of materials, the ability to supply by air or other means must be available.
Availability at all times required for voting purposes: Locations may be ideal for voting, but they need to be available for all voting-related functions required to be undertaken at the site. These could be well before voting day, in systems where voters lists for each voting station are posted for inspection at the relevant voting station.
They may be required after voting day, for finalisation of counts where these are undertaken at the voting station. Where buildings are used they should be available on the day or night before voting day, to allow officials to set up the voting stations, and be able to be left secured from the time of set-up through to commencement of voting.
Telecommunications capabilities: It is very important that voting stations maintain reliable communications with the election administration and, in higher security risk areas, security forces.
Voting stations should not be located in communications shadows, that is, at a location where there is no fixed line telecommunication facilities and mobile phone or radio contact is unreliable due to surrounding natural features or other interference.
Suitability of Location
In determining what are suitable premises or locations for voting stations, there are basic considerations of costs, the floor or ground area available, accessibility, and the condition and availability of facilities in the location Buildings that would generally be suitable for voting sites would include:
• schools, including pre-schools and kindergartens;
• court houses;
• community operated halls or club premises;
• government buildings.
Use of Private Premises
Where suitable public or community buildings or locations are not available--and this may occur often in rural areas--it may be necessary to lease privately owned premises.
In leasing private property for voting sites, care should be taken in ensuring that the location will be acceptable to all voters, in that the owner is not associated with active political participation. Similarly, it should be ensured that any private property used for voting is not normally used for an activity that may be offensive to minority cultural groups.
In some jurisdictions, additional restrictions on premises that may be used as voting sites are imposed in the legal framework (e.g., that they are not licensed to sell alcoholic beverages).
Integrity Considerations
Consideration also needs to be given to any effect the use of particular premises may have on perceptions of election integrity or on participation by voters.
This may be particularly important in transitional elections where significant sectors of the population may associate buildings owned by the state with repressive action by former regimes.
Costs
Public buildings such as schools and government offices are often available at concessional rates or free of charge from state agencies for voting use. Election legal frameworks could contain provision for forced requisition of state or other premises, either by the electoral management body or by state executive direction.
Such powers to requisition state premises can be very useful in systems where elections may be called at relatively short notice.
Co-Location
Depending on the size of the premises available, dealing with voters from more than one voting subdivision within the same electoral district at the one physical location can be an efficient manner of organising voting sites in urban areas. However, in using this method:
• staff management structures within the voting site must be rigorously defined;
• layouts organised so that material from the different voting subdivisions is kept separate and properly accounted for;
• additional control staff may be required to ensure that voters are directed to the correct voting stream at the voting station;
It would be usual that voting stations are located within the electoral district to which they are attached. This is often required by the election legal framework. Some flexibility in this regard may be useful.
Co-location of voting stations from different electoral districts at the same location near the border of adjoining electoral districts, may, in urban areas, allow the use of facilities that can take advantage of economies of scale.
It can be very useful in reducing the higher unit cost absentee votes in election systems that allow absentee voting on voting day. Control systems for such voting locations need to be particularly rigorous.
Special Voting Facilities
Care is needed if consideration is being given to creating special voting sites to accommodate specific occupational groups, such as government employees or military personnel. There is always the potential at such sites for intimidation of voters by their superiors.
Ballots from such sites would preferably be mixed with those from normal geographic area-based voting stations before being counted.
