Suburban Places

Suburban

Suburban areas feature a lower density of people and a higher concentration of open space than their urban counterparts. While streetside voting activity may be appropriate in some places, surface parking lots, regionserving parks, and campus-style school and government complexes may be adapted to meet physical distancing requirements.

Summary Election officials serving suburban areas may need to consider the temporary re-allocation of street and sidewalk space, as well as surface parking lots and adjacent civic spaces to facilitate some or all voting activities. General spatial and communication strategies for suburban 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 Repurpose one or more vehicular travel lanes along major or secondary streets to accomodate poll location access, and vehicular or in-person queuing;

2 Reconfigure adjacent streets and/or surface parking lots adjacent to the polling location to accommodate voter pick-up and drop-offs, as well as drive-thru or in-person voting.

3 Utilize internal or external street,sidewalks, or other available open spaces for in-person queuing; where possible utilize building breezeways, porticos, awnings or other architectural features that provide weather protection.

In all instances, manage pedestrian and vehicular flow so that queuing 4 voters are provided dedicated separate space from non-voting travelers and passersby on other personal, academic, or professional business. Key Steps • Install temporary traffic barriers and signs along key streets 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. • Maintain access for emergency and public transit vehicles, as well as those carrying voters with disabilities. • Ensure design and operational guidance complies with overall local, state, and national health and election laws and standards. 15 3

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Planning + Communications •Create partnerships between local Board of Election and relevant Municipal /County / State agencies to develop site plan criteria that includes sanitation, disabled voter access, weather protection, signage for voters, poll workers, and elections observers. •Create and implement 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.

Improving Access

Develop Poll Location Access Enhancement Plans Because some or all voting activities may take place outdoors, previous voter access plans may need to be altered to account for and coordinate changes to streets, parking lots, and other means of access. If your jurisdiction has chosen to facilitate outdoor voting, the local Board of Election should partner with the local transportation department, public works, transit agencies, and / or poll location facility staff (schools, fire departments, city hall, libraries etc.) to develop a COVID-19 access plan. At a minimum, each plan should include the following four steps.

Analyze Adjacent Land Uses and Streets 1 All adjacent land uses and streets should be analyzed to ensure local stakeholder needs are taken into account, including deliveries, emergency services, resident access etc. To do so, be sure to contact local stakeholders – community groups, residents, businesses, and other geographically relevant institutions – to identify key obstacles or issues that may impact design, programming, or street segment selection before implementing the voting access plan. The role each street plays in the wider transportation network should also be considered. Wherever possible, focus vehicular lane closures streets with lower traffic volumes and optimally those without public transportation routes, hospitals, fire departments, or other essential services. On-site parking lots, playgrounds, ball fields, or other public spaces may be used as needed to minimize coordination among multiple government agencies and jurisdictions, e.g. City and State.

2 Accommodate All The Ways People May Arrive Access plans should consider all the ways people may arrive and respond accordingly by highlighting available resources or enhancing opportunities for people to access the polling location safely. In suburban areas this may may primarily include motor vehicles, but should also account for those who walk, wheel, bicycle, scoot, skate, take public transportation, or use ride share/ride hail services.Temporary access and safety improvements may be as simple as employing crossing guards during all polling hours, or partnering with a local school bus contractor to offer rides for seniors or other discrete populations of voters. Additionally, clearly designating pick-up/drop-off areas for taxi service, ride hail providers, and access-a-ride / shuttle services will help voters keep their own cars at home. Finally, the addition of temporary

Democracy in the Park poll workers set up in 200 parks to register voters, answer questions about the voting process, and accept absentee ballots. Photo: City of Madison, WI wayfinding to/from bus stops, adjacent intersections, and bike trails should be provided, especially if typical voter access points have shifted in response to the pandemic.

3 Ensure ADA accessibility Temporary street reconfigurations like partial or full street closures must be ADA accessible. This requirement impacts everything from building entrances to available sidewalk widths, to drop-off locations and sidewalk ramps. If necessary, designate secondary ADA-compliant routes or outdoor areas for voters who require universally accessible voter booths.

Monitor All Points and Means of Access 4 Allocate municipal staff and/or poll workers to monitor polling location access points so that any issues can be flagged and resolved as soon as possible.

The following two pages include a sample access plan, detailing typical elements as well as those that might be enhanced under a streets for voting plan.

Access Improvement Plan This sample plan identifies the location of existing poll access features relevant to in-person and drive-thru voting, as well as possible voter experience enhancements. Note, most of the existing and proposed enhancements are concentrated along a major street, a nod to the auto-oriented realities of suburban environments where most non-residential destinations are located along busy secondary or major thoroughfares. Accommodations must be made accordingly to support non-driving voters. Select improvements are visualized in more detail on the following page.

Secondary Street

Minor Street Major Street

Existing Access Access Enhancements See detail on Following Page

Access Enhancements Temporarily enhancing access to/from and around polling locations will assure voters that their needs have been considered and that their health and welllness matter as much as their vote. Doing so for transit-dependent or populations who are too young, too old, or uninterested in owning a private automobile is of high importance, as poll access becomes more challenging for the poor where polling locations are spread further apart and owning a car is an assumption.

Pick-Up / Drop-Off / Queue Zone 2 Where in-person voting will occur inperson, prioritize entrances that are ADAcompliant and feature any architectural elements affording voters protection from the weather.

Traffic Management 1 Whether for parking, pick-up / drop-off, or drive-thru voting, facilitating safe vehicular access and requires clearly segregating pedestrians and poll workers from motor vehicles. It also means clarifying how vehicles negotiate conflict points and ensure all voters are safe as they access and Drive-Thru Voting 1

depart the polling location. Streets, drive aisles, and parking lots may be reconfigured to enable drive-thru voting, ballot drop-off, and passenger pick-up / drop-off. Clear wayfinding and information signage should be placed at decision points and placed to help people walking, cycling, wheeling, and driving to safely access and participate in the election.

Queuing Overview Under normal circumstances, parking lots at suburban poll locations are used for just that; voters park on-site and enter the queue to cast their vote. However, if it’s legal, the creation of drive-thru or curbside voting option offers an appealing, physically distant, and weather-proof option for election officials and voters alike. However, it’s important to consider the potential negative impacts of a vehicular-based voting system, especially for the 11 million American households that cannot afford or choose not to own motor vehicles.

As comfortable as they may be, queuing cars are spatially inefficient when compared to people on foot or in wheelchairs. Indeed, voters arriving by car at peak voting hours may easily overwhelm a site’s queuing / parking capacity. The average sedan is 15 feet in length so leaving just 10 feet between vehicles (front and back) yields a total of 35 feet of linear space per voting vehicle. Thus, what requires 600 linear feet for 100 voters on foot requires as much as 2500 linear feet, or 2/3rds of a mile in length, for the same number of people voting by car.

Actively planning for and managing vehicular queues will result in a better experience for both poll workers and voters alike, leading to less disruption to other roadway users, and mitigate unintentional social and economic impacts within the surrounding area. This is especially true in locations that can offer both in-person voting as well as drive-thru voting options over the voting period.

The diagrams at right depict 115 vehicles under two scenarios. The first scenario is the “business as usual” approach whereby voters oversubscribe the voting location’s available parking supply, which results in people parking opportunistically and before accessing the queue. The second scenario shows a majority of available parking spaces repurposed for drive-thru voting, leaving only 16 available parking spaces for poll workers etc. but allowing a more orderly process so long as upstream traffic impacts are planned for and managed. Scenario 1 Business as Usual 115 cars | 68 parking spaces Indoor Voting

Scenario 2 115 cars | 16 parking spaces Indoor and Drive-Thru Voting

Queuing Recommendations Queuing needs will vary greatly across suburban environments. State, County, and Municipal regulations combined with endless polling location, street configuration, and neighborhood characteristics will result in a wide variety of voting conditions. Below are three recommendations for improving the queuing experience for drive-thru voters.

1 Assess On / Off-Street Vehicular Queuing Capacity and Plan Accordingly In order to design an effective and safe drive-thru voting experience, election officials should work closely with transportation planning and event management professionals to assess any given site’s total vehicular queuing capacity. While traditional morning and evening “peak” voting patterns may flatten in 2020, using maximum estimates will help determine any/all worst case scenarios so that election officials understand at what point queuing activities begin to not only impact the surrounding neighborhood and transportation system, but more importantly, the voter experience.

The assesmment should take into account available off-street space within parking lots, bus drop-off zones, and drive aisles, as well as available on-street space. This will determine how many cars will be able to queue along adjacent streets if /when necessary. In some instances, peak queuing activity will require re-purposing available parking or vehicular lane space for queuing activities. Finally, in some instances it may be helpful to deploy traffic control officers to help manage streets and intersections that get tied up with queuing voters.

Maximize Safety and Comfort 2 While those sitting in their automobiles will be comfortable and protected from the elements, it will be necessary to physically separate drive-thru voting activities from poll workers, carfree voters who may be accessing the queue on foot, and from the rest of the traveling public. Additionally, sanitation, water, and port-a-potties should be made available to poll workers and voters alike. Additionally, a dignified place to engage with walk-up voting should be provided outdoors if indoor voting is deemed too risky or logistically challenging.

3 Assign Workers a Clear Role in the Queue: Communication Assigning enough poll workers to help manage the expected peak hours will ensure a smoother election process for voters and officials. Indeed, it’s not enough to station poll workers at actual voting booths. Rather, poll workers should also be tasked with walking along the vehicular queue to answer questions, field concerns, issue sanitation protocol, distribute sanitation products as needed, and to help communicate wait times to voters who may grow impatient. In some cases, this may mean sending workers off-site to help disseminate information to voters queued off-site.

Parking lots may be easily converted to drive-thru voting centers, however transportation and election officials should beware of the upstream impacts extensive queuing may have on the surrounding neighborhood, wider transportation network, and most importantly, on the voter experience.

Health + Comfort

Summary Voting during a global pandemic mandates all local, county, and state health precautions must be followed so as to limit the spread COVID-19. Sanitizer should be readily available; masks worn; physical distancing requirements made clear; and reporting/contract tracing practices operationalized should someone report symptons after they vote or work the polls. Beyond these immediate health and safety, voters in suburban areas may experience the widest range of health and comfort needs. At in-person voting locations, the range of needs will not be much different than those in urban areas. Thus, this guidance is focused on a reduced number of health and comfort provisions approprite for drive-thru voting locations and are focuse as much on the voter as they are on poll workers.

The following sixelements are but a few ways safe, healthy, and comfortable voting practices can be instilled in suburban or other drive-thru voting environments.

Physical distancing markers Voter check-in / 2 health information sign 3 1. 4 5

Sneeze guard

Sanitation station (sanitizer, wipes, etc.) Pop-up tent Crossing guard 3

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