With voting under attack, Arizona schools don't want to be polling locations

[mahatmakanejeeves]

DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
With voting under attack, Arizona schools don’t want to be polling locations

As false information about elections continues to spread, many school leaders in Maricopa County have closed their doors to the democratic process.



A school crossing guard stops cars for voters entering a Phoenix polling station in 2020. (Matt York/AP)

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Clara Ence Morse and Hannah Natanson
August 5, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

PHOENIX — For the first time in as long as anyone can remember, Arizona’s largest public school district isn’t opening its schools to voters as polling sites. ... The reasons have been building for years, but the final straw for Mesa Public Schools officials came last November with a small, low-turnout election that became mired in misinformation and menace. ... “It was very chaotic,” Assistant Superintendent Scott Thompson recalled. “It was overwhelming.”

Although voting was supposed to be done mostly by mail, mistrust led many voters to drive to the schools to fill out their ballots in person, causing traffic jams and confrontations. Voters confused school staff for election workers and harangued them. Some accused school staff of “disenfranchising voters” for hosting secure ballot drop boxes. ... “I couldn’t imagine it in 2024,” Thompson said. “We just don’t know how to make it work.”

For generations, public school gymnasiums, classrooms and cafeterias have been fundamental to American elections. But when voters in Maricopa County — home to Phoenix and more than half of this swing state’s registered voters — show up to make their voices heard in November, chances are, it likely won’t be at a school. Some will instead head to rented-out storefronts. Others to aquatic centers. Or even a funeral home.

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 systems and 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.

{snip}

Morse and Natanson reported from Washington.

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez writes about voting issues in Arizona for The Washington Post. She previously covered politics for the Arizona Republic. Twitter https://twitter.com/yvonnewingett

By Clara Ence Morse
Clara Ence Morse is a political data reporter at The Washington Post. She joined The Post as the Investigative Reporting Workshop intern with the Data team, and previously served as the editor in chief of the Columbia Daily Spectator. She lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter https://twitter.com/ccemorse

By Hannah Natanson
Hannah Natanson is a Washington Post reporter covering national education. Twitter https://twitter.com/hannah_natanson

[GreenWave]

1. And thereby allowing the deniers to triumph.

Only in Blue districts I would imagine.