It’s a familiar sight in Boston in mid-October: a line of people, many decked out in Red Sox gear, stretched down Jersey Street, waiting to pass through Gate A and enter historic Fenway Park. But this year, they weren’t going to see a baseball game. They were going to vote.
The Red Sox were one of dozens of sports teams to offer up their home stadiums as polling places for this election. With the coronavirus pandemic forcing polling sites to relocate from cramped spaces like fire stations or high-risk locations like nursing homes, sports facilities have emerged as excellent alternatives (if not without controversy in some cases). Their massive size means they can process tons of voters at once and still leave space for social distancing, and some of them are even outdoors, which lowers the risk of transmitting the virus.
Plus, they’re just a cool place to vote — especially for fans who haven’t been able to see their favorite teams in person this year. The demand to vote at Fenway was sky-high; on the first morning of early voting, a Red Sox staffer said the line wrapped around nearly the entire park, from Jersey Street to Van Ness Street to Ipswich Street to Lansdowne Street, and even later in the day, voters were waiting 45 minutes to get in. Nevertheless, one family of Red Sox season ticket holders told me how happy they were just to have a chance to visit Fenway this year. And voter Kate McElhiney said she went out of her way to vote at Fenway, which is on the other side of town from her Dorchester home. McElhiney told me she wanted to vote at Fenway partly because of the novelty, but also partly because she considered the cavernous, well-ventilated concourse the safest environment in which to vote.
Hundreds of people stand in line to vote at Fenway Park.
John Tlumacki / The Boston Globe / Getty Images
While the pandemic may have created the demand for stadium polling places, it wa