My state votes by mail (or ballot boxes). Every election, the county sends a voter’s pamphlet with candidates and ballot box locations. I decided to map all of them, and was happy to see that a little more than half were already there. For these, most were missing at least some of the information, so I added to those.

Using satellite imagery, you can easily see most of them, so it makes it pretty easy to map them all.

On the nodes themselves, I included the following tags:

amenity=polling_station
drive_through=[yes/no] # most are, but some are not
last_checked=[current_date]
location=[outdoor/indoor]
name=[x County Ballot Drop Box]
opening_hours=24/7 # almost all are 24/7, except for some indoor boxes
polling_station=ballot_box

There were a few indoor boxes that I need to go survey in person. Once I get those, all except for one will be on the map in my county. The final remaining one is indoors on a military base, so I will be unable to survey for obvious reasons.

I do wonder if there’s a better way to set the hours, since they’re closed for most of the year except during elections. Because of special elections and primaries, I cannot just say that they’re open from October to November. If anyone knows of a better way, please let me know! Additionally, I wonder if it’s better to name them using the location name from the voter’s pamphlet, rather than a generic county drop box name.

I encourage everyone to add their local ballot boxes before your next election, wherever you are!