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.

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.

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.

Its not like door hinges melt when you cross the threshold, is it? I just don’t see the big deal.