EDINBURG — Steps have been taken to ensure polling places in Hidalgo County are safe, according to the elections department.
Interim Hidalgo County Elections Administrator Hilda Salinas says the department communicates with municipal, county and school law enforcement departments prior to elections on security measures.
“We have placed all local law enforcement and districts on notice, as well as our sheriff’s office and our constables,” she said. “And we have created plans on how to keep the voters, as well as the faculty and students safe. That is what we’re here for.”
County law enforcement and security towers will be posted at some sites, Salinas said.
“It’s mainly on a case by case basis when it comes to these voting locations,” she said.
About 38 of the county’s 86 Election d
Day polling places are at schools.
Increased focus on school safety in the wake of the Robb Elementary school shooting coupled with a rise in political violence have caused some schools nationally to rethink their roles as polling sites.
Several large North Texas school districts — among them Dallas ISD — have decided to make Election Day a holiday for students over the past couple of months.
Closer to home, Weslaco ISD leadership made the same decision earlier this month.
Hosting a polling site, trustees seemed to agree, does not justify even the chance of some sort of security breach.
“If somebody raises a red flag about the possibility of something happening — safety — and it’s not corrected, we don’t wanna be told ‘I told you so’ if something happened, heaven forbid that,” Board President Armando Cuellar said. “But it is a legitimate concern, and we need to do everything — everything — necessary to ensure the safety of our students.”
Superintendent Dino Coronado even suggested that long term, schools may no longer be an appropriate place for polling places.
“Things have changed since Uvalde, with kids involved, and I think the elections departments are going to have to look at polling places other than schools,” he said.
Salinas said earlier this month that she hadn’t seen any other significant concern about school polling place safety in the county. She couldn’t say whether or not a move away from school polling sites could be a possibility down the road, but noted that gyms and ample parking make campuses particularly useful as voting locations — especially in rural communities.
“We do find ourselves in situations where the only building would be, let’s say, the gym inside the school, and there really isn’t another building in the area,” she said. “So we do also have to follow the law in making sure that the polling location follows the rules mandated by the Texas Election Code as well.”
The department is cognizant of post-Uvalde safety concerns, Salinas said, noting that school polling place safety was a topic emphasized in meetings between the department and law enforcement.
“All of those things we are taking into account right now,” she said. “We are meeting, we are discussing, and we are meeting with the key officials that would be able to assist us and administer security measures to make sure that everybody is safe.”
