Pocatello/Chubbuck school district wants to do away with using schools as polling places

The Pocatello/Chubbuck school district wants to do away with schools being used as public polling places for elections.

On Thursday, members of the school board, and others, went before Bannock County commissioners to voice their concerns.

In Bannock County, there are 11 schools that are used as voting locations. Those schools include 17 different precincts and about 14,000 voters.

The Pocatello/Chubbuck School District asked the commissioners to move polling locations from schools because of a concern for student safety.

Pocatello police chief Scott Marchand agreed that it’s a safety issue and a concern. This last election, he said he had to pay overtime to several officers to bring in enough staff to have an officer at every school for Election Day. Bannock County also paid to bring in some extra security presence as well. But Marchand said it wasn’t as thorough as he’d like to see and he worries it’d be more of a reaction to a situation than being able to prevent one. It cost both the county, Pocatello & Chubbuck cities and local law enforcement to bring in added staff.

Marchand said he would like to see the polling locations moved out of schools.

“Your polling places hold our most vulnerable children right? They’re in elementary schools – the youngest of the young,” he said. “It disrupts their day, we’re not controlling who goes in and out of the school when they vote, they’re just walking in, they’re walking out.”

The school district superintendent, Doug Howell, said one solution people always ask about is just canceling school on election days.

“The answer is that election days do not really coincide with any school holidays, trimesters, or professional development opportunities or those timelines.” Howell said. “Especially when we consider that elections are held on Tuesdays. This can be problematic, in that some would see it as an extended weekend, a four-day weekend.”

The school district wants to see the polling locations moved but county commissioners, and the local elections staff, said it’s not a simple matter and there’s a lot that has to be considered from a legal perspective and from the voters perspective.

Julie Hancock, elections administrator for the county, said legally, people have to vote in the precincts they live in so they vote on the correct issues which means the schools couldn’t just be combined to other precincts.

“If you add more precincts into those polling locations, you’re gonna get confusion, chaos, disruption. That becomes voter suppression,” Hancock explained. “Then you’re looking at parking and accessibility as well.”

She added that voting locations need to be centralized so that voters have access to it and don’t have to travel long distances, because that would discourage many from voting at all. Hancock said the problem is, where many of the school polling locations are, there are not a lot of other building options that can be used as a central voting location – while also still meeting state standards for a polling location.

Another issue that was discussed is that not any public building can be used. It was mentioned to use churches, but both commissioners and Hancock said in a city and population like Pocatello, that doesn’t work. Churches can be seen as offensive and many won’t want to go to one in order to vote. Commissioner Steve Brown said it affects many because of the idea of “separation of church and state.”

He said they have to be careful because locations can affect voter turnout and mindset.

“What happens is, you have a different mindset when voting in a school, then voting in a mall, then voting in a church,” Brown said. “To the point, where, if you move a polling location to a church, it can change the voting habits of the outcome of an election those locations 8 percent to 12 percent.”

All did agree student safety must be considered, but the problem is what solution works for everyone?

“Is there any statistics that show there have been issues? There are not that I can find,” Marchand concluded his remarks. “But I will tell you, I don’t want to be the first, I don’t want to be the third, I don’t want to be the fifth, I don’t want to be on the list.”

It was decided in the meeting on Thursday that continued discussion and cooperation needs to happen on the issue. Commissioner Brown will also head up a committee who will discuss possible solutions, including some immediate things that can be done to help fix some of the concerns.

One potential option that was discussed is if proper replacements could be found, to slowly phase out the schools as polling places. Meaning, change a few at a time instead of all at once.

The school administration and county commissioners agreed more work is needed and they will continue to work together on a solution.