Where I grew up election were held in firehouses and public schools. I seem to remember the same being the case in Boston. But here in the Midwest, you go to a church to vote, and that is very annoying.
Equally annoying is a public school having its graduation in a church:
Americans for Separation of Church and State filed a lawsuit in 2009 objecting to Brookfield Central and Brookfield East’s use of Elmbrook Church for graduations. A federal judge in Milwaukee ruled the ceremonies didn’t violate the separation of church and state because they weren’t religious. A three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision last month. [source]
Americans for Separation is pursuing this to full court. I have a feeling they don’t have a chance.
Where do you vote and/or graduate?
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Until my county went to mail-in ballots for all, my voting location was in the basement of a nearby Lutheran church. This, despite the presence of several schools nearby, any one of which would have been more suitable for the task. I consoled myself with the notion that, for once, I entered a church and was able to depart without someone trying to convert me.
For the record, I’m in Tacoma, Washington.
Yeah, I walk by a middle school and a high school to get to the church we vote in. And, the two schools house the party caucuses, so it’s not like they don’t participate.
@Sean: My consolation is that I get to prove that I can, indeed, step into a church without instantly bursting into flame.
More personally, I grew up just a stone’s throw from the Brookfield in question, and furthermore, my brother went on to join that same Elmbrook Church, largely because that’s where his girlfriend-then-fiancee-then-wife and her family went. It’s a pretty despicable mega-churchish kind of place. And you don’t want to go past on a Sunday; they don’t seem to really care about their impact on traffic there. (I think the road might have been expanded since I was in the area, but certainly not at their expense.)
In my little nook of Southern California, I know of one middle school and one church that have elections in them. Years back, I remember that elections even took place at someone’s house near our neighborhood. It kind of makes me wonder how it’s actually decided where elections take place, like is it just a volunteering thing and they’ll take wherever they can get?
I’d also be interested in seeing how location can sway people’s votes. I remember reading somewhere that people tend to be more honest (or nervous) when they think someone is watching them– even if it’s just a photograph of a pair of eyes on the wall. So do elections in churches make people feel like they’re being watched by god and thus more likely to vote the way god wants them to (whatever they may think that is)? And if so, is it legal to pollute voting environments like that?
We had an election yesterday and the polling station was at a school. However, I voted in an advance poll which was at a church (the same one as for the advance poll for the last federal election). Previous times I’ve voted here, including in the municipal election last year, the polling station was at the community centre.
I’m from Australia. We vote in the local public primary schools.
I think it is wrong to use a church for a government function if there is any other usable venue.
I’ve voted in four different towns in Massachusetts, two towns used the town hall and the other larger towns (needing multiple locations) used school gymnasiums.
Growing up I lived in the tiny Oaklawn section of the city of Cranston Rhode Island. Oaklawn had to use our church for voting because the only government owned buildings where a tiny elementary school and tiny public library, neither with enough space for the voting machines. On the bright side my Dad, the minister of the church, had us take down all religious decorations from the hallways and function hall for election day. As I recall this was not a government requirement but being American Baptist our sect was very strict on separation of church and state. All of the church members would have preferred that voting be held elsewhere but there just was no other suitable location.
Ontario experience: my parents had to use the local Catholic elementary school. It was the closest structure to their home.
In my condo, we’ve got a Town Hall (routinely used as a polling station for those in the rental apartments next door) and a party room (routinely used as a polling station for residents of the condo). Both are handicapped accessible, but the town hall is directly accessible from the outside.
yes… it’s all coming back to me. Precinct 1 Police station and Somerville High were my polling when I lived in “Boston” (most of the time) when I wasn’t overseas.
Many of the polling places in Louisiana are in churches.
The religion of my parents prohibit adherents from entering any religious site that is NOT of their sect, and there are other religions that have this prohibition, so this most definitely would be a breach of the establishment clause.
Currently the place I go to vote is the indoor hallway of an almost abandoned shopping center. Despite the fact that I graduated from a Catholic high school we still had our ceremony at the local civic center.
Nominally, we vote in a volunteer fire station (we live in a place you see far to the north as you fly over flyover country). However, because Mrs Corva has some health issues and I am her sole caregiver, we usually vote by mail. The local public ed institutions graduate in their own facilities, and AFAIK the same is true of the church-affiliated ones. Slightly off topic: the only establishment-clause conflict here that I can recall centered around public school buses giving rides to church-affiliated school kids, and that was a really long time back.
If, IF, there was a lack of a suitable public building in the area in which to vote I could see a church being a good place turn to, just because the buildings are typically built for easy access and rated by fire safety/building codes for the kind of occupancy a long voting line can produce. But that’s just me thinking pragmatically.
The building in which I vote used to be a school. It’s where I went to middle school, actually, and since the city couldn’t manage to sell off the building/property to contractors (some dispute about the abutting park, I think) it got turned into a grossly under-utilized activity center of some kind.
My polling places have all been public schools, or in one case a community center owned by the city. North Carolina and Maryland.
I first registered to vote in a public library (North Carolina). At the time (yes, I’ve told this story before), I had to take an oath to uphold the Constitution, similar to the President’s oath of office. Which was fine, I had no problem with that, except of course I had to tell them that I was an atheist. The librarian (oath administerer) was fine with that, but didn’t really understand what to do — she pushed aside the Bible, but still ended “so help you God?”, so I just said “I do… except the part about God”. But I got, I swear, death glares from this guy sitting nearby, that I’ll never forget. Just for saying that I’m an atheist.
Shouldn’t the original article read “Americans United for Separation of Church and State”, i.e. the Barry Lynn group? They often abbreviate it as “Americans United”, or just “AU”. Or is there really a different group, “Americans for Separation of Church and State”?
In Kansas (Overland Park), my first polling place was my high school. Then I moved (to Olathe) and had two different polling places. A church, and the church *next to* that church. Olathe is very churchy. I think it’s pretty easy to opt in to permanent early vote-by-mail status in Kansas these days, so it’s probably also pretty easy to avoid voting in a church, for any reason or no reason.
Like another commenter, I also lived in Somerville, MA. My polling place there was a fire station. Honestly, that was really, really weird because they got a call and had to roll the trucks out while I was voting.
I’ve voted in two fire stations, a university student center, and the community room of an apartment building. I graduated in a local sports arena.
In Chicago, my polling place has always been in either the local public park field house or at the local public grammar school. Some years back, the precinct next to me had their polling place in the local bar. I always thought that was cool, but someone complained and they stopped that several years ago.
As for HS graduation, I attended a religious school (Lutheran), and even they used their own gymnasium for graduation rather than a church. Of course, that HS was where I also first was exposed to solid anthropology in the form of comparative religion classes. They were pretty cool for a religious school.
For college, at the graduate level (in a private secular university) we held our graduation in Symphony Hall in Chicago, which was kind of cool. I mention it because I recently heard they have now started using a nearby Catholic high school for graduation ceremonies, which is a little weird.
I graduated in a large non-denominational church and I vote in a synagogue
@AaronJ: Sounds like you’ve been reading Cracked, specifically 6 Weird Things That Influence Bad Behavior More Than Laws. But more directly relevant is 6 Things You Won’t Believe Can Brainwash You On Election Day, including #5, “Where You Vote”.
Here in New Zealand, voting booths are in pretty much every rentable space big enough to hold them, which often includes churches, as well as schools, sports clubs, community halls, and gymnasia. I first voted in a boy-scouts hall, and have voted in churches since then.
We don’t really have high school graduations. Our final assembly was in the school hall. My University graduations have been in the Town Hall.
I’ll toss in the links from the more reputable source to which Cracked linked, and to which that source linked in turn:
Does where you vote affect how you vote? | Psychology Today
Political Psychology – Journal Information… well, shoot, that one seems to be a dead link, and a Google search only turns up other links to it
And I suppose I should get around to answering the actual question sooner or later. As best I can recall, in order, I’ve voted in a church, an elementary school, a public park building, and most recently, living out in the sticks without much else, a VFW post and a middle high school.
We vote at the VFW in my friendly inner-ring suburb of Minneapolis.
I vote by mail. I graduated in India for my HS and Bachelor’s. Neither had anything resembling a religious ceremony. My Masters’ (yeah two of them) from Fla. Tech. Again, totally secular graduations.
I agree, this one is a loser.
In Alaska, I always voted in a grade school. Here in Seattle I have voted in public schools, churches, and, for a while, in the lobby of a public housing complex.
My high school graduation, like that of most Americans’, was held in a gym, but not the gym of our school. I forget the reason why we had to go across town to another high school.
Oh, yeah… my high school graduation was held in an auditorium belonging to a local college.
Last voting cycle we got switched to a school, but before that it was indeed a church — and not only that, but they left all their posters and shit up, which meant one year I stood by a poster showing a YEC timeline of Earth “history” while I waited in line for the voting booth. Very fucked up.
This sort of issue was exactly why Oregon decided on mail in/drop off ballots all the way. If you happen to be homeless, you could pick up your ballot at any library, municipal building or state building and anyone could drop off their ballots at any of those places. Previously they needed to use churches on occasion – at least two such in Portland being for legitimate reasons. There are a few areas where getting to the nearest public building for voting would have been prohibitive.
As far as graduations go, there are two Portland schools that I know of, both in the same district, who hold graduation at a mega church. Neither has nearly the space for graduation ceremonies and though they have the option of using an athletic field in a neighboring district (Portland is split into several), that district has the highest concentration of homeless students in the PacNW, possibly the country. They are very keen on making it as easy as possible for parents, family and friends to celebrate the graduation of their loved ones – especially those who overcome a lot of fucking insanity and manage to graduate while being homeless.
For what it’s worth, the church in question not only sets a stage curtain as a backdrop for graduation, they also remove any removeable Christian reference and cover what can’t be, in the entire area where the public will be coming through. They also – on their dime, offer a reception lunch afterwards. While the covering over of everything possibly is probably by mandate, the reception after certainly isn’t. And if anyone tries to proselytize during that, they certainly didn’t bother with me.
I don’t think that churches are the best place for these sorts of event to happen, but really don’t see a big problem with it when it seems to simplify the process and as long as certain rules are implemented and followed.
So what about the flip side of this? How do you (anyone) feel about churches renting public school facilities for church services? Assuming of course, that there is equal access for other groups to rent said facilities on weekends as well…
err…The bit about the possibility of using the neighboring districts athletic field should have been more clear. Using that facility would make it rather difficult for many family members – especially the less able bodied, to attend graduation…
I’m German, I vote in a local pub. (No joke!)
Surely any large enough space that’s available for the electoral people to hire is good enough. Sure, it’d be better if it were in some neuteral ground, but maybe the churches are bigger, more convenient, or just cheaper.
Its not like door hinges melt when you cross the threshold, is it? I just don’t see the big deal.
Paul: In a school, a teacher should not wear a religious symbol because the teacher is in a position of authority in relation to the students and thus there is promotion of religion. On the street, the same teacher can wear ten crosses and a pope hat, no problem. Classrooms are places designed for and understood as locations of influence and personal change. Crosses on the wall are not allowed because it is promotion of religion, but everybody who works for the same public school can decorate the outsides of their houses with six armed gods and plastic jesus statues.
The polling place is a place where there is an authority. You can be stopped from voting if they don’t think you are who you say you are. There is a rule that you can’t wear a political pin on your chest when you walk in the room. You can’t just walk wherever you want to walk. Having this be a church is not the same as a cross on the blackboard in a public school, but it is arguably along the same lines.
Furthermore, there are people who can’t walk into a church without great discomfort for one reason or another. Forcing people to walk into a church to vote is obnoxious and offensive.
When I started living in Long Beach, CA, we voted in someone’s garage. For the past [I don’t remember how many] years, the polling places have been elementary or middle schools.
My voting place in San Francisco is a Catholic church.
I should also mention that I’ve voted in SF in a middle school for troubled teens and in someone’s garage, and there is another polling place nearby in a Starbucks.
Here in St. Paul I vote in the lobby of a church down the street. When I was in Mpls, I voted first in a community center and then they changed our polling station to a church. I created a stink because the long line to vote wrapped past the church bulletin board covered in all kinds of anti-abortion literature. If voters can’t wear political buttons or shirts into a polling place than the polling place can’t have up their own political propaganda on display. To the credit of the polling station workers, they went and removed the materials right away.
My high school graduation all those years ago was in a ice arena. I was in the choir and our director wanted us to sing a song all about christ’s love for the graduation. It was a modern song written by a friend of his. He was just clueless to the fact that some of the students wouldn’t appreciate songs about christ at their graduation. All the atheists and jews in the choir (all three of us as I recall) told him we were not comfortable with his choice as it did not represent us and he did pull it from the program.
Um… your property tax exemptions at work.
before everyone gets all up about this… just remember that the idea was to not reinvent the wheel. If a church was conveniently located, had a suitable, not particularly religious area (and lutherans, episcopals and other groups design their churches in such a way as to make this possible.) I grew up Episcopal, and the church “parish hall” was used regularly, by all sorts of people for all sorts of things, with a fine disregard for religious propriety. I think we even had union meetings. And the non religious areas were just that… non-religious. It was a nice hall, had tables, folding chairs and a fine kitchen. Shame to use it just one day a week, you know.
And that’s the property tax bargain.
If it has suitable parking and street access – and have the sort of insurance coverage that makes it possible, then yes, it may well make more sense than doing it at a school. It depends on a lot of non-obvious things. But mostly, it’s tradition and it’s tradition because it works fine.
Now, if it’s making you walk past Ikons or forcing tracts upon you, that’s illegal – but it would be just as illegal and wrong at any other polling place.
And let’s also remember that the separation of church and state is founded in part from the bitter experience of minority religions being persecuted by established majority religions that in essence, gained control of the state apparatus. So it would be equally problematic for a humanist movement to gain control of the apparatus of the state and use it to enforce humanist or secularist values. It’s exactly the same issue.
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