This week, Barrington High School hosted an early voting site for the General Election, run with the Cook County Clerk’s Office. According to District 220’s own announcement, the site was for eligible BHS students and staff, and students served as election judges. Everyone else, including the veteran down the street, the retiree on a fixed schedule, and the parent who pays the taxes that run the building, was not invited.
This isn’t a one-off. It’s part of the Clerk’s “Defenders of DA’mocracy” program. In the spring primary, 24 suburban high schools became fully functioning voting sites. On a single day, those school sites recorded 1,136 ballots, more than the 1,021 cast during the first seven days at the regular countywide locations. The Clerk calls that success. I call it a government office choosing which voters get a polling place brought to their door.
Brought to you by the “Chicago Bears?”
The program’s name isn’t a typo. “DA’mocracy” is a nod to “Da Bears,” because the Clerk’s Office developed the program in partnership with the Chicago Bears. Yes, a professional football franchise is a named partner in a program that runs official polling places inside public schools.
The public announcements don’t answer the questions any taxpayer should ask. What does the Bears’ role actually involve? Is the team providing money, materials, staff, or promotion? Is there a written agreement, and who signed it? Does the team have any say in which schools are chosen? Is anyone else sponsoring election administration in Cook County?
A private organization, especially one that is lobbying local and state governments for stadium deals and public money, has no business being involved in how elections are run unless every term of that relationship is public. “Partnership” is a word that hides more than it explains. The Clerk’s Office should release the agreement and any related communications, and if it won’t, voters should ask why.
Shut out of their own school
District 220 spans four counties: Cook, Lake, McHenry, and Kane. Barrington High School is its only high school. Because the site was run by the Cook County Clerk, only Cook County voters could use it. Students and staff who live in Lake, McHenry, or Kane County, along with all of the district’s taxpayers in those three counties, were shut out of a polling place set up in their own school.
Some voters are more equal than others
Defenders will point out that Illinois already provides on-site voting for residents of nursing homes and veterans’ facilities. That’s true, but it isn’t the same thing. That process is limited to physically incapacitated voters who apply in advance, and it’s run as supervised vote-by-mail on one of the few days just before the election. Nobody is setting up a full early voting site in the VFW hall or the senior center, staffed by its members, open on a weekday for that community alone. If convenience-based, community-specific polling places are good policy, why do only high schools get them? It’s fair to ask whether the expected voting patterns of each group have anything to do with it.
Who is watching?
Illinois law is clear that pollwatchers may be appointed to observe early voting at each permanent and temporary polling place where early voting is conducted. If credentialed pollwatchers from candidates, parties, or civic organizations were turned away or never given a realistic chance to attend, the public deserves an explanation. A polling place inside a school building, during school hours, surrounded by the school’s own staff, needs more transparency than usual, not less.
Equal treatment, full disclosure
None of this is about whether young people should vote. They should. It’s about equal treatment and open government. If the Clerk wants to bring the ballot box to a community, every community should be eligible, observers should have the access the law guarantees, and the public should be able to see exactly who is partnering with the office that runs our elections. Until then, voters are right to ask whether “civic engagement” means engaging the voters the system prefers, and whose interests are being served in the process.
Image Source: Barrington 220 School District Facebook Post
