Accessibility (in all senses of the word), ease of use, an environment that anyone in the community can feel comfortable in etc etc. That's basic.
The electoral commission in the UK are really big on ensuring that this type of situation doesn't happen.
To me, holding it in a church is more likely to ensure that the turn out is skewed even more over to the right wing religious types. And having the station in another town is stupid. People have a right to vote and there is a responsibility on those holding the elections to ensure that everyone in the community can access and exercise that right. Ad astra per aspera
But it needs to be clearly signposted. That's so wrong keep to the Fen Causeway
As for distance to the polling station, it's about three or four miles to the usual local polling station that covers the two or three villages round here Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
I attended a conference recently that was held in a church and walked in to see posters for the alpha course everywhere. I am extremely uncomfortable with that because it doesn't respect the space of those without religion or with a different religion. To me that would be inappropriate in a polling station, more so than the building itself being a church. Ad astra per aspera
That said, "if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out..." I can swear there ain't no heaven but I pray there ain't no hell. _ Blood Sweat & Tears
Postal votes also now. Ad astra per aspera
One of the reason why contested county elections were so expensive was the need for candidates to bring the electors to the polling place. For example in Middlesex, the second smallest of the counties of England, most of the voters lived in the east of the county in and around the City of London. However the county poll was held at Brentford, in the west of the county. I have seen advertisements in early nineteenth century editions of The Times where candidates advertised times for their supporters to catch a coach from London that the candidate provided. No doubt the problems were even worse in the larger counties.
As the electorate increased and poorer people began to vote who could not afford to take a day or two off work to go and vote, it was obviously sensible to provide multiple polling places closer to where people actually lived. Thus we end up with at least one polling place in each local government ward.
The wards in Slough, where I live, are quite small geographically; but most wards have several polling districts usually voting in a school or (as for my polling district) in a mobile polling station the Council parks on a convenient patch of grass.
