Alexia Bunge, “The Architecture of American Voting”
Mentor: Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, Architecture
Poster #32
Voting is an essential part of the democratic process and as such is a crucial part of any adult American’s life. A polling place refers to a building in which voting occurs, a polling station is a room in which voting happens, and a voting booth is a semi-private stall where the voter marks their ballot. In the United States, voters usually cast their votes in public or municipal buildings, instead of in polling places built specifically for this purpose. From an architectural point of view, this condition begs the question, are there any purpose-designed and built polling places in the U.S., and if so what do they look like? This is important because in the field of architecture great significance is given and taken when creating buildings with symbolic purpose and public use. To answer this question, I began by searching through and contacting state and local historical societies and databases across the country. This included registries like the National Register of Historic Places and the Historical Marker Database. Several sources confirmed the previous existence purpose-built polling places in Wisconsin, Maryland, and Ohio, but none of these structures are still in use. All of these were small, single-room buildings built without an architect’s participation. In the case of Ohio, many of the structures were portable for easy deployment in cities on election day. In Wisconsin and Maryland, the structures were permanently located in rural areas. It appears that this organization of small and single-room polling places was discontinued after World War II likely due to population growth, and the later enaction of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This still leaves the question of why is voting is not significantly represented in our architecture or why have architects not proposed any innovations in the architecture used by Americans for voting.