I allow all users on my forum to create and vote in polls do hadn't noticed you couldn't restrict poll creation. Odd really as you can restrict voting in polls - so someone could create polls but then not vote in them. I agree it should be in the core, along with several other poll enhancement suggestions that have been made.
Not really, you spend more time here arguing about certain things than it would take to edit those templates.
Anyway, that's your only option at the moment, the suggestion I linked you to was made back in June 2011 so you could be waiting a while for implementation in the core.