LIVERMORE – This November, voters in two local towns will be casting their ballots in different polling places, the result of more stringent handicapped-access laws.

Voters in Livermore and Livermore Falls will be going to their respective town offices to vote, instead of the traditional locations at the community building and fire station.

A study done two years ago by the state, and some new equipment towns are supposed to provide for their voters have made the previous locations unsuitable.

“In Livermore, the community building didn’t pass on a lot of things,” Town Clerk Renda Libby said Thursday. “Bathrooms, doorways, and ramps were not adequate – right down to the door handles. Parking was an issue,” she said.

The need some communities have to move polling locations is really a confluence of two issues – handicapped accessibility, and the availability of a dedicated phone line, Deputy Secretary of State Julie Flynn explained.

First, the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that polling places be handicapped accessible, which means having wide enough doors for people in wheelchairs, having handicapped parking spaces and a flat enough parking lot, having accessible bathrooms, and other things.

Newer municipal buildings are constructed to be accessible, but older ones sometimes have problems, Flynn said. In 2004, the state sent groups out to measure and investigate the 600-odd voting locations in the state, and to note where they complied with the rules and where they didn’t.

Hardly any passed fully, Flynn said. “There were probably only a handful of towns that were 100 percent accessible,” she said. Some had only minor problems – not enough handicapped parking signs, for example, or no automated door-opener. “I think where you see people moving their polling places, it may be the number and scope (of the issues),” she explained.

This November, the state is also working to get every polling place in compliance with the Help America Vote Act, which requires that every location have a voting device for people who need assistance voting.

The state purchased an Accessible Voting System that lets voters call in to cast their vote, rather than having to read and being able to write. To have an AVS, towns need a dedicated analog phone line – with fax capabilities – in their polling places.

The actual AVS system is paid for by the state, Flynn said, but towns are responsible, financially and otherwise, for making their buildings accessible. Towns that need assistance, Flynn said, may apply for grant money to help with some of the costs associated with compliance, after the work has been done.

“We can’t build someone a new building or ramps,” she said. But the state can help with some costs.

Livermore’s community building not only had slightly too-narrow doors and the wrong type of door handle, it was also not set up to be able to have a separate phone line for the AVS system.

In Livermore Falls, in contrast, the polling place has been changed partly because of the state’s new system, and partly because it might be dangerous to have the voting in the fire station, Town Clerk Kristal Flagg said.

On top of having little-to-no handicapped parking near the fire station, things could get difficult if the fire department was called out during voting hours. “If there was ever an emergency, here we are in the middle of the voting,” Flagg said.

Making the town office compliant instead was relatively easy, she said. A small ramp to go over a lip on the doorway and some handicapped parking signs were among the small purchases the town made.

Change is never easy, Libby said, and moving the polling place from the location where she can remember her parents voting, and the location most townspeople have gotten used to, might be a little jarring.

But it’s important, and a positive change, however hard it might be to get used to. “We want (disabled voters) to be able to vote and feel comfortable about all these aspects, and it’s a law. We need to be on board,” she said. “It’s a very good program,” she said, “and it’s a pretty important election. What people need to realize is that we all may know somebody (who needs it).”