Summary Election officials serving rural areas may need to utilize surface parking lots and other adjacent open spaces to facilitate some or all voting activities. General spatial and communication strategies for rural environments are offered below, with more specific guidance for improving access, queuing, and health and comfort detailed in the pages that follow.
General Spatial Strategies 1
Reconfigure surface parking lots, ballfields, lawns, or other open spaces adjacent to polling locations to better accommodate drive-thru or inperson voting.
2
Utilize internal or external sidewalks for in-person voter queuing; where possible utilize building breezeways, porticos, awnings or other architectural features that provide weather protection.
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Manage pedestrian and vehicular flow so that queuing voters are provided dedicated and physically separate space from non-voting passersby. Provide clear wayfinding and informational signage that directs voters to polling locations.
Key Steps • Install temporary traffic barriers and signs along approach roads and within parking lots.
• Empower municipal staff and/or poll workers to install, manage, and monitor barricades / queuing activity.
• Provide comfort amenities such as seating, shade, water etc. as needed for in-person voting.
• Maintain access for emergency vehicles, school buses, shuttle vehicles, and designate priority parking spaces for voters with disabilities.
• Ensure design and operational guidance complies with overall local, state, and national health and election laws and standards.
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Planning + Communications • Create partnerships between Boards of Election and relevant Municipal / County / State agencies to develop site plan criteria that includes sanitation, disabled voter access, weather protection, and signage for voters, poll workers, and elections observers.
• Create an expansive communication plan to broadly publicize any/all
pandemic related restrictions and resulting polling protocols and election-day access, queuing, and health and comfort amenities offered to voters.
• Partner with cultural groups, nonpartisan civic associations, schools, etc. to promote options and logistics, and to support general election activities.
