Take Me Out To The Ballot Box
Some voters who are also sports fans might find themselves casting their ballots in a familiar place today: their favorite team’s home stadium. Since this summer’s racial-justice protests, there has been a movement among sports teams to volunteer their facilities as polling places. And with the coronavirus pandemic forcing the relocation of many polling places to bigger sites that allow for more social distancing, election officials have generally jumped at the opportunity (although some declined the teams’ offers).
In total, at least 39 major-league sports venues — including iconic venues like Madison Square Garden, Dodger Stadium and Lambeau Field — are being used as voting locations this fall. Seventeen of those are NBA arenas, thanks in large part to the activism of basketball players. In late August, NBA players (led by the Milwaukee Bucks) staged a wildcat strike in protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The strike ended two days later after, among other things, the league agreed to convert its arenas into polling places wherever possible.
I visited one such sports-stadium-turned-polling-place, Fenway Park, during early voting in Boston, and voter interest was off the charts, with a 45-minute line curling around the block. Inside, voters checked in at a desk in front of the concession stands and voted at booths scattered throughout the third-base concourse. Upon exiting, voters were given an “I voted at Fenway Park” sticker and the chance to take a photo in front of the empty field.
