To provide an acceptable standard of amenities for staff (who will be spending a very long day within the confines of the voting station) and for voters, additional equipment may required. This is not to suggest that electoral management bodies go overboard in providing luxurious surroundings for polling officials, but that there are basic services which, if not already available at the voting site, will need to be obtained. This would include:
- lighting, where voting or counts are undertaken after daylight hours;
- toilet facilities;
- drinking water.
Lighting and associated power generators would preferably be obtained from other government agencies (such as military forces) or leased from private contractors. If possible, the leasing of portable toilets (at a ratio of one to every four to five hundred voters expected) would be preferable to having polling staff, as their first duty on voting day, digging latrines. There would generally be little justification for purchase of these items, though stocks of small-scale lighting equipment (torches and lamps) could be held by the electoral management body.
In voting stations with no running water available, visits from local government of military water tankers may be arranged. Small quantities of drinking water for use by polling staff may be delivered with voting materials.
(For further discussion of voting station amenities, see Voting Site Facilities.)
