General election: The architecture of democracy

Four sheets of plywood, a few skinny lengths of cheap softwood, eight hinges and a pencil on a piece of string. That is the architecture of democracy.

They have three sides to give some privacy, a fold down writing surface and legs. It does not seem much but every election time, out come these odd, ad hoc, bits of folding furniture to act as voting booths, instantly converting some shabby municipal room into a forum of political expression.

These collapsible booths have become so familiar that we do not question them, we accept them blindly as the fittings of the democratic system. But where do they come from?

It turns out there is an industry, albeit a rather small industry, making them - alongside the other paraphernalia of elections - the 'Polling Station' signs in their austere, unchanging, big black print and the 'Way in' and 'Way out' signs.

There is a standard version, an accessible booth (with a lower writing surface for wheelchair users) and a corner version with only three legs and a triangular surface. They cost between £80 and £125 each, plus VAT.

There are a number of companies that make them, including Signet Signs, based in Bristol. "They're all made here in the UK, the only change has been that we make lower versions for disabled access now," said Mike Rawlings, managing director of Signet Signs, adding that there have not been any innovations in the design.

"They're robust and they're low-cost. They do the job and it's a product that's going to last. Why change it?" he said.

However, there have been alternatives. A remarkably ugly cardboard design that looked like a truncated flat-pack fish sculpture was developed recently in response to an inquiry from Cornwall council.

They cost £15 each and were recyclable but were abandoned after they were found to be completely inadequate.

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Curtains are a common feature of voting booths internationally, although not in the UK.

In the US, many booths feature stripy red, white and blue curtains giving them more of a festive feel, reminiscent of beach huts. With its secular political arena, it might come as a surprise that churches and synagogues regularly double up as US voting venues - the country's public infrastructure remains far less developed and dispersed than that of Europe.

But the US also has a fascinating array of voting equipment. Many are contained within attache cases and, with their spindly legs, look a little like portable barbecues when opened up.

Finest among the futuristic, James Bond contraptions is the Votomatic, a booth that folds up into an aluminium briefcase (legs and all), which enjoyed popularity in the 1960s.

<>It was the successor to the extraordinary 1890s contraption designed by Alfred J Gillespie for the standard Voting Machine Company of Rochester, New York, a pressed steel box with an integral curtain on a loop like an old-fashioned shower and a complex steampunk system of levers and gears for voting.

The complexity of the punched card technology so popular in the US - which ultimately led to the hanging chads fiasco of 2000 that saw George W Bush elected on a widely questioned margin - makes the workmanlike British solution with its stubby pencil on a string seem quaintly robust.

It seems somehow remarkable that this quintessentially British piece of furniture, with its austerity chic, the making do and getting by language of pure, unselfconscious function should come to experience the execution of democracy. Yet it does.

On a day when politicising is banned, perhaps we can appreciate this most modest icon of anonymous British design and democracy.

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