Aug 29, 2015 3 min read

If you vote in either Washington or Greene counties, particularly in an off-the-beaten path precinct in an off-year election, you’ve undoubtedly witnessed this scene or something like it.

You show up at your polling place at, say, lunchtime, and are greeted by volunteers whose conversations with one another have long since petered out. There are still plenty of cookies left on a tray provided by one of the volunteers. When you ask how many people have voted so far that day, they estimate around 17 or so.

In any rational universe, this is not an efficient deployment of manpower or equipment. That’s why we were intrigued by ideas put forth last week by Wes Parry, Washington County’s assistant director of elections, who thinks the county should consider doing away with the 176 different precincts between Peters Township in the north to Deemston in the south, and instead designate 15 different schools to be voting centers.

He told the Observer-Reporter‘s Barbara Miller that the school districts could declare each election day a holiday, and one school in each district would be outfitted with 25 voting machines and 25 electronic poll books, which would make the process speedier. He also said that having polling places at schools or municipal buildings have the advantage of being handicapped-accessible, that the county should consider allowing residents to vote outside their assigned precincts, and that a system that would allow residents to vote by mail should also be considered.

By going this route, Parry said, fewer voting machines would be needed, as would fewer volunteers.

It would be more efficient, sure. But there’s one unanswered, nagging question: How easy would it be for people to get to polling places under such a system?

What provisions would be made to get an elderly person in a far-off corner of the county to a polling center? Or someone who doesn’t have a vehicle at all? As it is right now, most people who live somewhere like Washington could walk to a polling place if they had to, even if a few of the locations require some uphill climbing.

It was announced last week that Pennsylvania will become the 23rd state to have online voter registration. That’s a development that’s well overdue. And it’s worth thinking about other ways exercising your franchise can be made more convenient for voters and more cost-effective for taxpayers.