In the eight years since Donald Trump was first on the ballot, hundreds of schools throughout this fiercely contested battleground county are no longer willing to assume the risks associated with holding elections. In 2016, 37 percent of county polling locations were schools, according to a Washington Post analysis of data obtained through a public records request. So far this year, it’s 14 percent.
Heightened school safety protocols and sustained attacks on voting systemsand the people who run them — largely by Trump and his supporters — have prompted school leaders across America in both red and blue states to close their doors to the democratic process, according to interviews with nearly 20 school district leaders, county officials, school safety officials and election experts. In at least 33 states, the law says public buildings, including schools, can or should be made available as polling locations. In many districts, administrators now cancel classes on Election Day.
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“In this environment, where you have people with body cameras and weapons that are being brandished, that is a concern — that is intimidating for many people,” said Scott Menzel, superintendent of the Scottsdale school district. “It just takes one flash point to ignite something that’s catastrophic and I absolutely don’t want that to happen on any one of my campuses.”
Voter suppression isn’t just purging voting registries and requiring photo ID.
Aren’t elections done on days when there are typically no teachers or students on site?
But I’d argue that this sort of capitulation to the threat is almost as complicit in “ruining democracy” as the threat itself. This is paying the Danegeld.
No. Some school districts schedule a teacher workday for Election Day, but it’s not universal by any means. In lots of places, it’s just a regular Tuesday.
Most of the districts around here have off on voting day. In addition to the safety issue, I think another reason is that there are some people who aren’t permitted to be near schools while students are there, but who are still allowed to vote.
Plus, of course, even in a world without crime, it would be disruptive to have both classes and voting at the same time. Those spaces where they set up polling booths, the gym or auditorium or whatever, are all places that, ordinarily, the students would be using in some way or another.
Yes. IIRC they just do it in a separate area. For example, doing it in a big assembly hall, on a day when there’s no assembly going on. Kids won’t be in that part of the school and voters can come and go through a door that goes directly from the hall to the parking lot. ISTR, but I could be wrong, the school will have someone in charge of making sure voters don’t (accidentally or on purpose) end up in the school itself.
I wonder how they deal with that in general. Schools can’t be the only place some people aren’t allowed to be around. You could have a restraining order from an ex who lives next door to the polling place or you could be a sex offender and the polling place is within X feet of a day care.
Can they get permission to vote, even if it violates something else? A police escort? Stay on their best behavior and hope the police look the other way (or no one turns them in) while they’re in line?
In my experience, it depended on the nature of the election. Federal was a school closure. (My first vote I was still in high school and was at my old elementary school.) Local wasn’t, I suppose in part assuming that turnout would be low and any voters could be easily corralled.
The city and county have since consolidated elections to the point that there are no longer designated polling places based on address and instead there are a lot of “voting centers”, mostly in strip malls. With that and early voting (technically in-person absentee) you can walk into wherever is convenient, the software will print the proper ballot for your registered address, and you fill in the bubbles. A model that other places would be wise to copy in my opinion.
This is exactly the case at my polling place, which is located at a Catholic grade school (and has been for over 20 years), and school is usually in session on election day.
The voting booths are set up in the cafeteria, which is at one end of the building; the cafeteria is off-limits to the students that day, and there is a specific entrance that voters are sent to, which opens directly into the cafeteria room. Voters aren’t allowed into the other entrances, and never go down the hallway where the classrooms are.
(In thinking back on it, both grade schools which I attended, in the 1970s, were polling stations, and most of the places where I’ve voted as an adult were school buildings.)
When I was a kid, our elementary school was a polling place. We were always in session that day. It was a little exciting to see all the action (from a distance).
The school district vote in my district is held in a school meeting room that’s next to an outside entrance and doesn’t seem to be in any other use on the day of the vote. I presume that they schedule it like they would any other meeting in that space.
Having said that – other voting is elsewhere; early voting at the county buildings, on-the-day for my district at the firehouse/village hall.
I was going to suggest that, and it’s probably the ‘right’ answer, but not everyone wants to use an absentee ballot and/or plans far enough ahead to request one.
When we were kids, they rolled the big machines into the gym, and school continued as usual except no gym (or gym outside if weather permitted.)
Our site used to be in a middle school. I think I always went 1st thing in the morning, so it never crossed my mind that school would be closed. A while back they moved us to a church, and someone told me it was to avoid closing the schools. As someone who is not a big fan of religion (to put it mildly), it always put me off somewhat to go into a church to vote. (Yeah, I know - options…)
When I first moved to my current home, in suburban Cook County, in 1996, my polling place was in the garage at someone’s private home, about four blocks from my house. At some point, a few years after that, either the county or the state passed a rule that said polling places could no longer be in homes, and that’s when it was relocated to the Catholic school.
My polling place has been a church for a long time. Specifically the gymnasium, though. There just aren’t a lot of buildings in my town with the capacity needed for voting.
All of the places I’ve ever voted, and my parents when I was growing up, have been government facilities of some sort or another. Here, it’s at City Hall (though I understand some other parts of the town are at various schools). When I was in Montana, it was the local Fish and Wildlife office one year, and either the arena or stadium of the state university all the other years. Before that, it was all public schools.
Seems to me a Bowling Alley would make a great polling place. Spread the little booths out, leave the bar open and let people wear whatever shoes they want.
In my town voting is at the town YMCA, set up in the gymnasium. One has to walk through the lobby to get there, past rooms that are in use for exercise on one side and the swimming pool room on the other. One goes into the gym, walks to the table for one’s ward to be checked off on the voter list and given the ballot. Then one goes to the right to the row of voting booths to mark the bubbles with the provided voting pen. Done with that, one continues down the row to the table where one gets checked off the voter roster again, steps over to the ballot-gathering machine, feeds it in, and exits via a side door that leads to a hallway back to the lobby. It’s all very efficient and unless one goes at a busy time doesn’t take very long.