Many towns – including mine - use schools as polling places because they’re handicapped-accessible and have ample parking. But this year, over-heated campaign rhetoric, with repeated assertions that the election is rigged, and fears that so-called “Second Amendment people” may take action if they don’t like the outcome, has put some schools on heightened alert. NBC news has reported that because of safety concerns associated with having schools serve as polling places, districts in several states are cancelling school on Election Day altogether. An Ohio school official, whose district canceled school, was quoted as saying that “emotions are running high” and that the tenor of the campaign informed the decision.
We’ve even felt its effect here in my small town. For a few weeks this fall, some provocative yard signs appeared on a on a lawn abutting the town’s elementary school. One advocated for a presidential candidate to run for prison instead. Another showed an image of prison bars superimposed that candidate’s face. Unless they had the wherewithal to look away, school kids – including mine - saw those signs twice a day, as they came and went from school.
Perhaps someone from the school asked the property owner to remove them. Or perhaps the owner reconsidered the decision to put them up so close to the school. But either way, those particular yard signs disappeared after a few weeks. And I was grateful.
Across the Connecticut River from us, the rhetoric was even worse. Two weeks ago someone used black spray paint to write on the brick façade of a Hartford, Vermont, elementary school. “AmeriK.K.K.ans for Trump,” the graffiti read. That’s Americans with three Ks in capital letters, a reference to the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan.
The school quickly pressure-washed the wall to remove the offensive words, but the disconcerting impression remains. And so far, nobody’s been held accountable.
Our school is scheduled to be in session as usual this election day. And as I have since my kids started school, I’ve invited them to join me in the gym to vote. They’ll help me receive my ballot and place it in the ballot box. I tell them that voting and running for political office are rights that they’re born with as Americans.
Hopefully at the end of this Election Day, they’ll see that they can still do both safely and without intimidation.
