I guess my concern would be if it brings in more of the parish to vote. And how they have been indoctrinated.
But we have bigger fish to fry. One is about 5’11" 240lbs.
You would offend people, but folks wear deliberately offensive t-shirts all the time, so they would just figure that you are an asshole and move on. Gossip would happen and you might lose a customer or two, but your deliberately offensive t-shirt would be safe to wear anytime you voted.
Or at least that’s how it played out the time a couple of folks pulled that sort of stuff at our local polling place. You aren’t the first one to think about it and you wouldn’t be the last one to do such a thing, its not really all that original a thought.
Now…if you wanted to really confuse things, have a shirt made that says “A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for Satan” and wear that instead. Everyone will agree that it is not appropriate for a polling place, but nobody will agree as to WHY it isn’t appropriate.
I don’t think that is much of a concern. We’ve voted in a church for years and have never once been tempted to go back for any other reason, even the monthly potluck. They don’t hand out church literature or anything like that and there aren’t many church folks there at all. It is run by the election board employees and volunteers, not church volunteers.
A couple of election days ago one of the two polling locations in my town was at a church, where the pastor was running for the state legislature.
It had been a polling place since before he was either a candidate or the pastor, and the election was so lopsided anyway (in his favor) that it couldn’t have made a real difference, so nobody bothered to do anything about it.
Most of the polling locations around here are churches. Other than the courthouse, those are the only places that have a large enough area to accommodate the workers, voting booths, and voting machines. (Schools aren’t an option, because class is in session.)
Nobody gives it a second thought, as this is, quite frankly, the way it’s always been.
Guessing it works both ways, and that Republicans are sort of afraid of Court Houses. They should be. The law makes bad things happen to them there.
Are you familiar with the polling place priming effect? Studies have shown statistically significant correlation between the nature of a polling location and the lean of votes cast there. It’s small, but not something I’m comfortable ignoring. It’s not just churches, either; the studies looked at votes held in school locations on educational measures and a correlation there as well.
It might not influence you personally, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t push enough other people to affect the outcome of a very close vote. It’s yet another reason to support voting by mail–and, if that gets blocked…well, we might as well push to move polls to sites that favor our issues. Sauce for the goose.
Yeah, “Honey we can just walk to our church and vote”. Republicans lean religious. Not that they know what it means. I’ll stop there.
I wasn’t aware of this, thanks for the info. I guess I’m not surprised. Of course I’m usually like one of only ten people voting in my neighborhood. But this is a red area so I’m sure they are Republicans.
I definitely strongly support voting by mail. I signed a petition and we passed an amendment in my state to preserve this.
Many polling places in Germany, even the majority in my region, are bars/pubs. I’d like to see a study how that influences votes…
In New York, at least, there’s a very simple answer: no electioneering at the polling place, or within X number of feet outside while voting’s going on. (I don’t remember what X is, it might be 100’. There are always signs out.) A shirt with the name of a candidate or even a political party is off limits; it would be just plain illegal.
Those limits probably need work in a lot of areas. At my polling place (local city park), the distance doesn’t extend far enough to reach more than the closest few spots in the parking lot, so there are often campaigners standing at the edge of the legal zone electioneering as people walk in.
Likewise there’s always a bunch of campaign signs dotting the edges and central medians of the parking lot, so you’re inundated with names as you approach.
I used to work for the election department in Arizona, the law works the same way here. Kayaker talked about wearing an offensive t-shirt in a polling place at a church, I just offered up a suggestion as how to offend everyone instead of just a few church people.
Not so here in Maryland (where I was an election judge last year). You can wear your Trump gear into the polling place but you may not attempt to otherwise campaign and you may not linger. Vote and leave promptly (which is pretty much the rule for all).
never mind
Probably no net effect on the outcome, but a lot more of the scribbles go outside the lines of the little bubbles on the forms. 
The tradition is to vote first and then go to the bar, though.
The reverse is true in Wisconsin. One goes to the bar first for nearly everything.
And our liberal Unitarian-Universalist church in WI is also a polling place. Not sure how we got that over the evangelical megachurch down the road, but I’m glad we did.
I voted in a Unitarian-Universalist church last election, and it was the oddest thing… every office and referendum had a “Who really knows?” option added to the ballot.
.
eta: And the megachurch has party names changed to “Bible-Thumper” and “Dangerously Secular”…
All of the voting locations I’ve had experience with, in Ohio and Montana, have been in government facilities of some sort or other. In Cleveland, they’re mostly public schools. In Montana, it was mostly in sports facilities owned by the state university, and once at the office of Fish, Wildlife, and Game. Back here in Lakewood, a suburb of Cleveland, I vote at city hall, though there are also places in public schools.
I wonder where the closest polling place is for Green Bank, WV, and whether it’s inside the radio quiet zone?
And another perfectly good Pit rant degenerates into a rational and informative discussion. Sad!