Sources, method and gaps

What this is

CivicUMC lists the voting sites near each open United Methodist church in the United States for the general election on Tuesday, November 3, 2026: the Election Day polling place for the church’s address, the nearest early voting site and the nearest ballot drop-off. It is nonpartisan and says nothing about candidates or measures. Many congregations host polls, and many more can help members and neighbors find theirs.

This is not an official election source. Polling places change, and each voter’s polling place depends on their own home address. Confirm yours with your state at Can I Vote, run by the National Association of Secretaries of State.

Sources

Churches

18,949 open United Methodist churches with a physical address, from the denomination’s public church directory (UMData, maintained by the General Council on Finance and Administration). Addresses were placed on the map with the U.S. Census Bureau geocoder: most by street address, about one in eight only by ZIP code. Distances for ZIP-placed churches are approximate and are left out of the medians.

Voting sites

The Google Civic Information API, which carries the data states publish through the Voting Information Project. For each church we asked for the voting sites serving the church’s own address. The answer includes the Election Day polling place assigned to that address and, where the state provides them, early voting sites and drop-off locations.

In New York, where Google listed few sites, we added the New York State Board of Elections polling-site lists (October 2026). That list does not say which site serves which address, so for those churches we show the nearest site, and the church page says so.

Method

Distances are straight-line miles from the church to the site, not driving distance.

A church counts as a polling place when its polling place has the same street address as the church, or when the polling place is named as a Methodist church and is within 0.3 miles. A looser test — any polling place within 0.1 miles — finds about 617 more, but on inspection most of those are neighbors: the community center or courthouse across the street. We leave them out.

What is missing

States publish to Google on their own schedules. When we checked, these states had published no Election Day polling places: Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington. Several of them had published early voting sites or drop-offs, which are shown. Oregon and Washington vote by mail and have few polling places. We will check every state again on November 1–2.

The church directory lists congregations as the denomination records them. A church that recently closed, moved or left the denomination may still appear.

Who made this

CivicUMC is a Wroot Labs project, built by a United Methodist pastor in Austin, Texas.