§ 2501. Determining districts
(a) The board of civil authority shall designate one or more polling places within a town;
however, the voters at a regular or special meeting warned for that purpose may designate
different polling places. If the questions and candidates to be voted upon are not
identical for all voters in the town, so that different ballots will be used depending
on where a voter lives, the board of civil authority shall suitably divide the master
checklist for the whole town into separate checklists according to geographical boundaries,
at least 40 days before the election. The master checklist shall be divided in a
way that ensures that all voters on a particular checklist will be voting on the same
questions and candidates and will be given identical ballots. Each of the separate
checklists shall be organized alphabetically, and for each checklist the board of
civil authority shall designate the location of a separate polling place. Except
as provided in subsection (e) of this section or section 2147 of this title, each voter shall vote at the polling place designated for the separate checklist
on which his or her name appears.
(b) The board of civil authority may also divide the master checklist into separate checklists
for the convenient conduct of the election even if the questions and candidates to
be voted upon are identical for all voters in the town. In such case, the board shall
follow the procedures of this section.
(c) In preparing the separate checklists, the board of civil authority shall be responsible
for accurately determining the geographical location of the last known place of residence
of each voter in order to place the voter on the proper separate checklist. If at
any time except on election day the board determines that a voter should be on a different
checklist from the one on which his or her name appears, the board shall remove the
voter’s name from the wrong checklist and place it on the proper checklist in accordance
with section 2147 of this title.
(d) The board shall post prominent notices in and around the polling places urging voters
to check whether they have been placed on the proper geographical checklist. The
notice shall also explain the procedures by which a voter who is on the wrong checklist
for his or her geographical area can be added to the proper checklist and vote at
the proper polling place.
(e) If more than one polling place is located within the same building, each shall be
located so that it is separate and distinct from the others, and each shall be run
separately from the others with regard to the process of voting. Each polling place
shall have its own entrance and exit tables, guardrails, voting booths, and ballot
boxes, and it shall have its own election officials handling the entrance and exit
checklists, furnishing ballots, supervising the deposit of ballots, otherwise conducting
the voting part of the elections, and tallying the checklists after the polls have
closed. However, in the case of a town that uses vote tabulators designed to tabulate
ballots from multiple districts by means of a single tabulator, nothing in this section
shall prohibit such a town from using a single voting area and a single vote tabulator
for two or more districts, as long as voters are checked in through separate entrance
checklists and checked out through separate exit checklists if exit checklists are
employed. (Added 1977, No. 269 (Adj. Sess.), § 1; amended 1979, No. 200 (Adj. Sess.), § 56; 1981, No. 239 (Adj. Sess.), § 42; 1985, No. 198 (Adj. Sess.), § 2; 1991, No. 147 (Adj. Sess.), § 3, eff. April 25, 1992.)