Some schools opt out of serving as polling sites amid rising threats
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People wait in line to check in during early voting at a polling station at Ottawa Hills High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Nov. 3. Photo: Kamil Krzaczynski/ AFP via Getty Images
Some schools across the U.S. are electing not to serve as polling sites over security concerns.
The big picture: At a time when schools are face rising threats of violence, so are voting sites. Jurisdictions across the U.S. are taking steps to protect election workers amid concerns about voter intimidation and possible violence at the polls this November.
- Safety concerns have sparked some schools across the country, including in Arizona, Kentucky, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas to think twice before opening their doors to voters on Election Day.
- "It's becoming less and less common ... to see voting going on in schools with students present," National School Safety and Security Services president Kenneth Trump told Axios.
Zoom in: Schools spend an enormous amount of resources dealing with access control all year long, including securing their permitters, training staff to monitor hallways and doors, and managing visitors, said Trump, who has no relation to the former president.
- "Then on one or two days a year, we open the doors to anyone and everyone, not knowing who's there or who may have ill intentions," he added.
- "By the very nature of it, it just increases the risk by the fact that you're opening your doors," he said. "You have all the additional logistics, the management, and one more point to add to an already busy day for school principal or school safety officials."
State of play: There are essentially three options to reduce the risk — the first being to completely remove voting sites from schools.
- The second is hosting polling sites in schools without students present on campus. Some districts opt to have a professional learning day in the meantime.
- A third option is having polling sites at schools but amping up security and hosting the voting site in a part of the school that's further from the students, like in a gym.
Zoom out: Commissioner Benjamin Hovland, of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, told Axios that while there is growing concern over polling sites at schools, it's not a new issue and has been so for at least a decade.
- But schools are "a critical source of polling places for election officials," Hovland said, explaining that election officials are facing a challenge in finding adequate spaces that are centrally located, accessible and have sufficient parking.
- He pointed to a 2014 Obama-era Presidential Commission report that recommended, among other solutions to improve voter experience, the increased use of schools as polling places. The report suggested security concerns be met by scheduling an in-service training day for students and teachers on Election Day.
The bottom line: "Election or no election, polarized or not polarized, I would tell you that there's always some type of increased risk of opportunity," Trump said.
Go deeper: America's new election shields: panic buttons, bulletproof glass
