The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-04-12
Public Schools As Voting Places
Fly EDWARD J. WARD Social eveIopment. University of Wisconsin

l Exclusive Service The Survey Press l Bureau)
 l The first physical step in strengthening
 out our political derangement is the use
 of each public schoolhouse as the polling
 place of its district. 1 That a good start has been made is ev- l ident in The fact that more than 300
 schoolhouses throughout the country have
 already been put to this appropriate use. Seventy school buildings are serving as polling places in Chicago this spring. New York with 620 public schools and 554 other
 public buildings still votes in 413 barber shops well as many pool rooms, baker ies, undertaking establishments and small stores Although a bill failed at the re- | cent session of the legislature the people
 of New York are still struggling for law
 which will permit the use of schools as voting centers
 This movement must succeed. Expe-
 rience and reason make it clear that the
 public school is pre-eminently the place in which the people should voice their will in their own affairs.
 It is essential To use existing public
 buildings obvates the needless expense of renting private places, or purchasing, transporting. setting up, outfitting with means of warmth and light, taking down, retransportng and storing special booths , for voting. This expense tends to in-
 crease with the growing frequency of elections.
 It is worthy. The ballot box or voting machine is the instrument of society g sef-determination, to attain which man. kind has sacrificed and struggled Hope of orderly progress for the race centers chiefly in the intelligent use of the bal lot. The instrument of the ballot should have the most noby significant housing the community can give. The public school building affords that housing. It is appropriate. Elections are, first and finally, examinations of public intel ligence. The common educational build ings are t"r natural places for the period- ic tes. the common intelligence.
 It sient. The public school hor distributed as to be easily re-. Il the children of each dis trie stance children go each day adu. eadily go to vote.
 It 4S .,1rmanent. The storing of the vot- ing apparatus in a cellar loft or shed ex- cepting at election times suggests an in- termittent and occasiona. democracy, as though the people were in authority for only a day or two each year. The con tinuing presence of the voting instru- ment, permanently installed in the com munity building, proclaiins the contin- uing responsibility of citizens.
 It is educative. Tn Milwaukee the ques- tion whether the public schoolhouses should be used as the polling places was referred to the school principals. Their vote was unanimously in favor of it; the reason being that this use of the school buildings would be a positive aid in the most important part of the children's training. The central object of the pub- lie school is development of the capacity for citizenship. The practical difficulty is to visualize the business of democracy. The operation of voting is the supreme civic expression which, if the children can see it. makes for them a point of contact and departure from which they may go orN to the understanding of the processes of government as reality.
 It is simplifying. Making the public schoolhouses the polling places implies making the voting precincts and the school districts identical. This does away with the confusion that arises from hav- ing two differing units of neighborhood, a confusion in part responsible for our failure to appreciate the neighborhoo1, the group unit of society next in import ance to the family. This permanent ideu- tification of voting precinct and public school district reduces the possibility of gerrymandering. This use of the school house as voting center removes one practical reason for the failure of citi- zens to vote. Not infrequently citizens fail to vote at primaries and even at cleo tions because they do not known the !oca- tion of their polling places. Everybody knows the location of the public school house in his district.
 It is unifying. Not all the citizens in every public school district send their children to the public school. There are parochial or private schools. But there is no parochial or private ballot box, and when this ull-uniting instrument is per manently established in this neighbornood house if ma alSes nlain fha fact that ,r-ith