Using Elementary Schools as Public Voting Locations

Nope. It was '94. I bought my way onto the ballot for $23. The county clerk made me go register as a voter before I could legally add my name to the ballot. Registered independent. Was third out of six in a small Nebraska town.
I was able to participate in the televised debates. I campaigned hard. I actually gave a damn back then.

Strange things happened during the campaign run.

I started receiving unmarked packages in the mail with no return address filled with books from Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witness types...
Other more militia type literature with religious overtones.
It started to freak me out (not to mention my parents), eventually the local Feds got involved.
I was invited to the homes of local millionaires for dinner parties. I grew up in a very blue collar union household so rubbing elbows with what passed as the upper class of rural America was fascinating to me.
I could say much more, but that's not for this thread.


Schools should not be in session during elections. Just my two.
Churches should not be allowed to be polling places, either.

originally posted by: Buvvy
a reply to: the owlbear

Ok - gotta know.

Did you get elected mayor?

Doubtful. I heard the squirrelgoat had a much more effective plan for the police/fire budget.

Paranoia is a powerful thing. How do you even manage to live day by day?

Here’s something to really get you hiding under a rock.

There are thousands of people that come to high school football games. Very very little security and you are free to bring in what you please.

Should we all ban school football games now because someone could easily bring in a weapon?

a reply to: the owlbear

I'd love to read about the shady underground that is rural, small-town Nebraska local politics.

Seriously. Maybe the luminaughty saw your potential and was beginning their grooming of who they chose for future world dominator!

You missed out, man. Most have to wait till their like... 16th reincarnation to even be considered.

Even then they STILL make you drink the blood of a virgin goat with no guarantees. Blech!!

originally posted by: seaswine

originally posted by: Buvvy
a reply to: the owlbear

Ok - gotta know.

Did you get elected mayor?

Doubtful. I heard the squirrelgoat had a much more effective plan for the police/fire budget.

Nope. It was the trash panda hoarder of everything shiny that won. Or possibly the winner was the colon cancer that took him out three years into his first term because he was too cheap to spend for a copay.
One of my old classmates is mayor now. I'm half a continent away.

a reply to: TheLotLizard

Just so that you fully comprehend the situation.

In 2018 in order to enter a public elementary school a parent has to take a number of steps.

At the start of the school year we have to provide our drivers license and social security information to the school for a background check.

On the day we visit the school we press a buzzer on an external door. We announce ourselves and we are granted permission to enter. We are then in an inner vestibule. Another locked door is in front of us. To the side is the secretary’s office. We have to show the secretary our ID, sign in on the computer system (assuming we already did the background check) and then we have to get out ID badge printed just for that day showing exactly where we are permitted to go in the school. We put on the badge and we are buzzed into the inner portion of the school. This is what we go through just to have lunch with our child at school.

Tomorrow - none of these security steps will be in place. Both sets of doors (exterior doors and inner doors) will be open all school day. Nobody will be checking IDs prior to giving people access to the school. The general voting public will be walking in and out of the front door. There won’t be a metal detector or a “search” of voters prior to entering the building. I still have no idea what bathrooms the voters will be using (teacher’s bathrooms and student bathrooms are both located immediately outside the library). The library itself has multiple entrances/exits. It would be very easy to go in one door and out another and be in a dfferent part of the school.

The general voting public consists of a myriad of people with different backgrounds and different issues. In the general voting public you will see a portion of voters with mental health issues, anger issues, poverty/homelessness, criminal backgrounds, drug/alcohol abuse, and health issues. While everyone deserves the right to vote - I don’t think that having the voters casting their ballots 15 feet from my 7 year olds classroom is the ideal situation.

Also, the kids and teachers in the school are all required by state law to have their vaccinations. The general public is not. Whooping cough and TB are both airborne. Smallpox is making a comeback in the South. All it takes is one sick visitor to expose a large number of students to illness.

So yes - I am paranoid.

originally posted by: Buvvy
a reply to: TheLotLizard

Just so that you fully comprehend the situation.

In 2018 in order to enter a public elementary school a parent has to take a number of steps.

At the start of the school year we have to provide our drivers license and social security information to the school for a background check.

On the day we visit the school we press a buzzer on an external door. We announce ourselves and we are granted permission to enter. We are then in an inner vestibule. Another locked door is in front of us. To the side is the secretary’s office. We have to show the secretary our ID, sign in on the computer system (assuming we already did the background check) and then we have to get out ID badge printed just for that day showing exactly where we are permitted to go in the school. We put on the badge and we are buzzed into the inner portion of the school. This is what we go through just to have lunch with our child at school.

Tomorrow - none of these security steps will be in place. Both sets of doors (exterior doors and inner doors) will be open all school day. Nobody will be checking IDs prior to giving people access to the school. The general voting public will be walking in and out of the front door. There won’t be a metal detector or a “search” of voters prior to entering the building. I still have no idea what bathrooms the voters will be using (teacher’s bathrooms and student bathrooms are both located immediately outside the library). The library itself has multiple entrances/exits. It would be very easy to go in one door and out another and be in a dfferent part of the school.

The general voting public consists of a myriad of people with different backgrounds and different issues. In the general voting public you will see a portion of voters with mental health issues, anger issues, poverty/homelessness, criminal backgrounds, drug/alcohol abuse, and health issues. While everyone deserves the right to vote - I don’t think that having the voters casting their ballots 15 feet from my 7 year olds classroom is the ideal situation.

Also, the kids and teachers in the school are all required by state law to have their vaccinations. The general public is not. Whooping cough and TB are both airborne. Smallpox is making a comeback in the South. All it takes is one sick visitor to expose a large number of students to illness.

So yes - I am paranoid.

Did you....did you just say that smallpox is making a comeback? Lmao...

The same smallpox that hasn’t had a natural infection since 1977 and has been eradicated since 1980

Sure you should be in the care of children there pal?

a reply to: Buvvy
My father was the headmaster of a village primary school in the UK.
Elections were always held on Thursdays. It was routine that the school would be used as a voting centre (and he would be co-opted as a returning officer), BUT it was also routine that the school would be closed on that day. Just because it was inconvenient to have both activities running at the same time. I can definitely see reason for closing the school when security is also an issue.

a reply to: Buvvy

Schools are used but they are usually closed to students on election day.
That's unusual that they are open. I've never voted at a school that had classes going on at the same time.
You must be in Texas if you're having primaries Tuesday.

a reply to: TheLotLizard

I stand corrected.

I was remmebering this: www.texmed.org... when I typed smallpox.

The current outbreak is Measles. www.nydailynews.com...

So you are right. I’m totally over-reacting.

a reply to: DISRAELI

The school district had a floating day off that they could have used on election day. They chose to use it on a different day.

So the kids all got off of school the Friday prior to President’s Day (announced on short notice) when instead they could have taken off in election day.

Strange that your school will be in session on a voting day. Especially when districts know well in advance days a vote is going to be held, and here in my county (as it is in many counties across the US), there is no school on a voting day, so as to no disrupt the school.

a reply to: Buvvy

However, times have changed.

You bet they have! Its unconscionable to open these schools to the public using the locations for voting. You are quite correct to keep your kid at home.

Amazing to me the extent elected officials and government authorities are so behind the times in understanding the quantity of and pervasiveness of threats all around us everyday. Willfully ignorant? Living in the past? Or perhaps they just dont care?

Really sad. I have lost all respect for these government clowns.

a reply to: Buvvy

It's not like it's a new thing, schools, community centers, etc have all been public voting spots for ages. My local one is a church's rec center building. They also host activities for kids in it (various sports, craft/nature clubs, etc) When voting happens, those activities are moved to the church itself. Should they just up & cancel because people are scary? WTF kind of sissy pants mindset is that crap?

This is just terrible planning by your local officials. There absolutely has to be another way to go about this other than the main entrance and polling in the middle of the school.

I similarly vote in an elementary school and have many times been there while classes are in session during a vote. They open a side emergency exit door from the band/chorus room, lock the door from that room into the rest of the school, and have it pretty well self-contained. Closing schools would be a pretty crazy idea, I feel like there is some kind of vote going on more than a few times a year that would royally screw up the yearly school schedule.

Again, maybe when voting get the idiots that are planning this out of there, and someone with some common sense and planning skills put into office....

originally posted by: Buvvy
My son has asthma and he has to go to the school RN office for nebulizer treatments. That means he would have to walk solo across the path where the voters will be walking.

Oh goody, something my own brother had experience doing in school!

In short, he should be escorted, never allowed to go solo in the event of extreme respiratory distress. If he needs to use a nebulizer instead of an inhaler, this should ping some alarms already -- either the kiddo has trouble using a regular inhaler, or as was my brother's case, his asthma is severe enough to warrant using the neb during attacks instead.
Either way, nobody can get him immediate emergency help if no one is with him. WTF, even in HIGH SCHOOL, my brother was escorted for a nebulizer treatment, just in case. That's a hell of a liability for the school, and bitching about voting is what you choose to complain about? How about getting on their ass about not supervising an asthmatic child, not even in the double digits age yet, getting to their treatment solo instead?

originally posted by: eriktheawful
Strange that your school will be in session on a voting day. Especially when districts know well in advance days a vote is going to be held, and here in my county (as it is in many counties across the US), there is no school on a voting day, so as to no disrupt the school.

Alaska doesn't close schools for election days, and they are the primary polling locations in both the city and many of the villages. When the question has come up, the response usually involves federal funding and the schools not receiving any unless the kids are in session.