PHOENIX — For the first time in as long as anyone can remember, Arizona’s largest public school district isn’t opening its schools to voters as polling sites.

The reasons have been building for years, but the final straw for Mesa Public Schools officials came last November with a small, low-turnout election that became mired in misinformation and menace.

“It was very chaotic,” Assistant Superintendent Scott Thompson recalled. “It was overwhelming.”

Although voting was supposed to be done mostly by mail, mistrust led many voters to drive to the schools to fill out their ballots in person, causing traffic jams and confrontations. Voters confused school staff for election workers and harangued them. Some accused school staff of “disenfranchising voters” for hosting secure ballot drop boxes.

“I couldn’t imagine it in 2024,” Thompson said. “We just don’t know how to make it work.”

For generations, public school gymnasiums, classrooms and cafeterias have been fundamental to American elections. But when voters in Maricopa County — home to Phoenix and more than half of this swing state’s registered voters — show up to make their voices heard in November, chances are, it likely won’t be at a school. Some will instead head to rented-out storefronts. Others to aquatic centers. Or even a funeral home.

In the eight years since Donald Trump was first on the ballot, hundreds of schools throughout this fiercely contested battleground county are no longer willing to assume the risks associated with holding elections. In 2016, 37 percent of county polling locations were schools, according to a Washington Post analysis of data obtained through a public records request. So far this year, it’s 14 percent.

Heightened school safety protocols and sustained attacks on voting systems and the people who run them — largely by Trump and his supporters — have prompted school leaders across America in both red and blue states to close their doors to the democratic process, according to interviews with nearly 20 school district leaders, county officials, school safety officials and election experts. In at least 33 states, the law says public buildings, including schools, can or should be made available as polling locations. In many districts, administrators now cancel classes on Election Day.

The challenge has been especially acute in Arizona, where Trump’s narrow loss in 2020 inspired ceaseless conspiracies, false assertions that his and other GOP losses were illegitimate and death threats against county leaders who oversee voting and the workers on the front lines of running elections. Trump allies like Kari Lake, a Republican who lost her 2022 race for Arizona governor and is now running for the Senate, have empowered self-styled election-fraud detectors who are critical of both elections and the public school system.

Schools in the state can opt out of elections if principals say they don’t have enough space or if the safety of students is at risk. Administrators say there is little upside to taking part in an exercise that can draw divisiveness and intimidating scenes — creating a crisis for election officials who must provide convenient and accessible voting locations.

“In this environment, where you have people with body cameras and weapons that are being brandished, that is a concern — that is intimidating for many people,” said Scott Menzel, superintendent of the Scottsdale school district. “It just takes one flash point to ignite something that’s catastrophic and I absolutely don’t want that to happen on any one of my campuses.”

The trendline endangers the very voting method that Trump and many of his supporters have spent the past four years demanding: in-person voting.

The decline of school participation could confuse voters accustomed to stopping by familiar institutions to vote, experts said, adding an extra step to find a voting center that some people might be unwilling to take. Public schools are often core to the identities of communities big and small, and their proximity to voters and large spaces make them ideal to accommodate crowds and voting equipment.

Maricopa County has had to scramble to find replacements, often resorting to renting privately owned spaces, including those in shopping malls. Officials have budgeted nearly $1 million to lease voting locations this year, up from $53,000 in 2016.

“We cannot provide an in-person voting model without the support of our community,” said Scott Jarrett, a county elections director. “That’s schools, it’s churches, it’s community centers, it’s trusted buildings inside of our communities. It is a civic duty and a responsibility that we all share to make sure that we have a strong democracy.”

Location scouts for democracy

Maricopa County has a three-person team in charge of finding polling sites. They have grown accustomed to hearing the refrain: “Sorry.”

Late last year, they began planning for this year’s presidential election, according to election officials. They spend days driving from one edge of the county’s boundaries to the other. As one of the fastest-growing areas in the nation, new opportunities are literally built every election cycle, and officials said the team scribbles addresses into scouting notebooks.

The team examines records from the county assessor’s website, looking for large properties and contact information. They even stumbled upon retired NBA star Charles Barkley’s home, which seemed large enough to host a site, although election officials said they did not ask him.

The team sizes up everything from building space to parking lots and determines if they meet all sorts of requirements, such as accessibility for those with disabilities. They email and call schools, town halls, commercial building managers and others who previously opened their doors or may consider doing so for the first time.

Ahead of the elections in 2022, they emphasized their “desperate need” of polling places, according to emails reviewed by The Post. This year they’re instead stressing the need for community involvement in democracy.

Many declined, citing parking, insufficient space or no reason at all. Over the past four years, 159 locations stopped serving as sites — including 28 schools, according to The Post’s analysis.

In 2016, schools made up 239 of the county’s 644 polling locations during the general election, according to The Post’s analysis. Four years later, amid the pandemic, the county changed its rules to fully allow voters to cast their ballots at any polling location instead of an assigned precinct, reducing the overall number of locations for the general election to just 175. That year, 27 schools participated.

There has been no rebound, as election officials had hoped: For a July 30 primary, just 31 of 221 polling locations were expected to be schools, as of June 28. General election locations have not yet been finalized but will likely be similar.

“This is people making a cost-benefit analysis,” said Bill Gates, a Republican county supervisor. “The costs are perceived as being greater because it could create issues or bring threats of violence — or even violence. And by hosting a vote center, could they be pulled into a conspiracy? Is it worth it?”

Curtis Finch, a superintendent from a school district north of downtown Phoenix, said he considered hosting a polling site.

“Heck no,” he instinctively thought to himself. “Have you been reading the newspapers lately?”

In 2022, he had to tell a man who showed up with a firearm in this open-carry state that weapons were not allowed on school property, he recalled. And he said belligerent voters yelled at his staff over lines.

“In the old days, it was fun, and people were all excited to come vote — red, blue, green, didn’t matter what your party was, they weren’t yelling and screaming at each other,” Finch said. “It wasn’t a big production. Well, now it’s a big production.”

After weeks of negotiating, Finch agreed to allow a district office to be used as a polling site — only because children can be easily separated from voters, he said. He also offered up a bus parking garage.

“I have been trying to be a good neighbor,” he said.

High state of ‘uncertainty and anxiety’

Over the past two decades, amid school shootings and heightened safety protocols, many schools across the country began bowing out of participating in elections. The covid-19 pandemic in 2020 accelerated the pullback, as administrators worried about the spread of the deadly virus. And amid deepening Republican distrust of institutions and elections, it has been difficult to recruit those schools back, according to school and election officials, and a national report that examined where people vote.

“We’re in the highest state of ambiguity, uncertainty and anxiety around school safety than we’ve ever been in my more than three decades in this field,” said Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, which consults for school districts. School leaders he works with “are on edge sometimes to the point where, quite honestly, we’re telling people to stop and breathe. To exhale.”

Schools that are able to move polling away from their campuses have done so, but many cannot, often because of state laws requiring that they serve as voting sites if asked. Those school districts have increasingly held staff-only training days on Election Day, he said.

“The schools that have gotten rid of it are happy that they did, and they’re not going back,” Trump said. “Those that still have it will tell you privately, ‘No, I wish it wasn’t here, but we’re stuck with it and we’re doing the best we can.’”

In some counties, the number schools that are hosting polling locations has gone up.

In Florida’s fast-growing Osceola County, some churches, YMCAs and other community institutions view participation in elections as burdensome, exacerbating “polling place deserts,” said Mary Jane Arrington, the county’s supervisor of elections. When they refuse, she said she turns reluctantly to schools, which must participate under Florida law.

“It’s inconvenient all around,” she said. “But unfortunately, other community buildings just aren’t as receptive to us as they used to be.”

In New Jersey, Union County election board administrator Nicole DiRado is also relying more heavily on schools, which can lose state funding if they refuse to host polling places. The overwhelming majority of the county’s 156 polling places this year are schools, DiRado said.

“Look, I get it — I have two kids in public school,” DiRado said. Before she learned their school would be closed, she added, “I thought about keeping them home this year on Election Day.”

Push for civic participation

For all the challenges in Maricopa County, there have been wins.

Over the past four years, 109 new polling locations have emerged, including 15 school-affiliated ones and a large viewing room at a mortuary — although it’s only available on Election Day, election officials said, as it’s needed for funerals most other days.

The newly opened Mountain Park Health Center in a city west of Phoenix was designed to ensure that its community room and parking lot are large enough to accommodate voters. Though that clinic will not be a polling site this year because of election-calendar deadlines, two of its other locations will be.

“People feel healthy and stronger when they’re part of decision-making,” said Dr. John Swagert, the center’s chief executive.

And churches make up a higher proportion of polling places, a trend largely driven by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which emphasizes civic participation. The church planned to provide 27 buildings for this year’s primary, as of June 28, a decade high for the Church, according to The Post’s analysis.

“It really comes down to: we cherish the opportunity to live in a country where we have the privilege to vote,” said Candice Copple, the LDS Church’s Arizona spokesperson. “If we can be helpful by making it easier for people to have a nearby location to cast their vote, we’re glad to do so.”

Morse and Natanson reported from Washington.

ST. LOUIS — The mail carrier arrived to deliver the attack ads at the same time Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) arrived to dispel them.

“He’s about to hand you some lies about me,” Bush said as the carrier handed a glossy leaflet to a voter at a home in Old North St. Louis where she was canvassing for votes.

“All we ever see about you are negative ads,” the woman barked back at her as she pulled the handbill out of a stack of mail. “You need to get some of your own!”

“It’s because I called for a cease-fire in Gaza,” Bush replied. “That’s where all of this started.”

In Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, the pro-Israel lobby is pouring millions into a campaign to unseat Bush as part of a broader, well-funded effort to replace critics of the Israeli government and the war in Gaza, such as Bush, with more Israel-friendly Democrats. Outside groups have already spent over $15 million in this race, according to Open Secrets, a Washington nonprofit that tracks campaign finance and lobbying data. More than 80 percent of that money has gone toward ads opposing Bush and supporting her opponent.

A prominent member of the Squad of far-left Democrats, Bush was the first member of Congress to call for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, nine days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. She has described Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza — which, according to the Gaza health ministry, has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians — as a genocide. (Israel has denied the allegation in hearings at the U.N.’s top court.)

Bush is facing a tight primary contest Tuesday against St. Louis county prosecutor Wesley Bell, who is backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful pro-Israel group. By the end of June, Bell, a former member of the city council who pushed for policy changes after a police officer killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in 2014, had four times more cash on hand than the incumbent.

Bell and Bush are liberal Black Democrats who were born and raised here and who entered public service after protests against police shooting unarmed Black men. Both are beating back allegations of improper behavior: Bush faces a federal investigation over allegations that she misused campaign funds to hire her husband to provide security, and Bell faces a civil trial that has been delayed until January over allegations that he fired people based on their gender, age and race. Both candidates have denied wrongdoing.

But other than their conflicting positions on Israel — which has not been mentioned in any of the ads AIPAC’s Super PAC, the United Democracy Project, has spent $8.86 million on — the dispute seems to be over political style. At the heart of the race is a question: Should voters here elect a candidate who will vote with the Democratic Party, or one who will challenge its direction?

AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups spent $17 million to help defeat Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) in a June contest that became the most expensive House primary in U.S. history but could be surpassed by this race. Bush, an outspoken critic of Israel’s nine-month war in Gaza, is their next target.

The National Black Empowerment Action Fund, founded by AIPAC veteran Darius Jones, threw $1 million to the race last week. Jones described Bush as an “extremist” who uses her position to champion issues that will elevate her own profile to the detriment of the Black community.

At the voter’s home in Old North St. Louis, the constituent and the mail carrier said the huge numbers of ads had left them deeply confused about what to believe.

While Bush says her constituents resent having their tax money funding the bombing of civilians — drawing parallels to the Black Lives Matter movement — Bell said in an interview that she is “wrong” in her stance and that while he does not want to see “a single innocent civilian hurt,” he would continue to stand with Israel against a “genocidal” Hamas.

In interviews, most of the more than a dozen voters across the district did not know that a difference in opinions over the Middle East had triggered the flood of money into their local primary. Most also said that although they found the issue important, it would likely not be a deciding factor in who they vote for. In a district with a lower-than-average median household income and some of the highest rates of violent crime in the country, voters are worried about inflation, the cost of living and safety.

Jovan Manuel, 35, was one of the many voters who said that while the war embroiling the Middle East is awful, it would not affect his vote. “As far as I know, it’s a centuries old issue … We have to prioritize us, our children, our schools, instead of trying to fix that,” he said.

Spending a Saturday afternoon in a park in Ferguson with his family, he said he was not aware that pro-Israel groups were supporting Bell’s campaign. “I don’t know how I feel about that,” he said. “But people around here are fed up of Cori [Bush] and feel like she hasn’t done enough,” he said, adding that his vote would still likely go to Bush’s opponent.

Ads funded by the UDP and Bell’s campaign have largely focused on Bush’s two terms on Capitol Hill, pointing out how the activist-turned-lawmaker voted against several major Democratic or bipartisan bills that President Biden ultimately signed into law. Bell, who was also a liberal activist before becoming a prosecutor for the county, has pledged to work with the Democratic Party to pass major initiatives rather than “grandstand,” as he mentions in his campaign ad.

Patrick Dorton, a spokesman for UDP, said its endorsement of Bell was because of Bush’s “horrific anti-Israel record” as well as her “record of voting against President Biden and the interests of her own St Louis district.”

“I don’t know what Cori Bush is doing in Washington, but she’s not helping us here … She fights with Biden, she votes against our jobs, she gets nothing for us,” a man wearing a hi-vis jacket says in one of UDP’s ads. “I have had enough of Cori Bush, she did not deliver for St. Louis.”

In an interview, Bell denied being actively recruited by AIPAC, saying he had no communication with the group before he decided to run for Congress. He call AIPAC “an interest group just like clean energy is an interest group.”

Those in Bush’s camp see it differently. In her ads, Bush has said “St. Louis is not for sale,” attacking Republicans for meddling in the primary.

“Wesley Bell is taking money directly from the same Republican megadonors spending millions to elect Donald Trump and JD Vance to the White House,” said Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, a liberal political action committee dedicated to electing far-left candidates to Congress that has poured $2.3 million into the race.

“It’s deceitful,” Bush said in an interview. “If AIPAC and UDP decided to run [Bell] because they want someone who is going to say that they stand 100 percent with Israel … then say that in the commercials.” She views it as a projection of AIPAC’s power. “What they want to do is show that if you go against them, then you are at risk,” she added.

Bush’s personal story resonates with many voters here. She catapulted into the national spotlight as an outspoken activist during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, which gave her momentum to unseat Rep. William Lacy Clay, a centrist Democrat who held the office for two decades. Bush has since spoken openly — given that abortion is on the ballot in Missouri in November — about being raped and getting an abortion when she was younger. She has also recounted facing eviction. Her most notable act in Congress may have been protesting the expiration of the pandemic eviction moratorium by sleeping three nights on the House steps in 2021, which ultimately resulted in a temporary extension of the policy.

But after four years, Bush’s outsize, outspoken personality now appears to polarize her district. Voters describe her either as one of the most authentic St. Louisans they could have in office and a breath of fresh air, or as someone who has prioritized her personal politics above her district’s interests.

One of her biggest local vulnerabilities is that she voted against Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, drawing the ire of local labor unions, many of which are now backing Bell.

Bush has also missed 187 votes between January 2023 and June 2024, making her fifth among lawmakers with the most missed votes, according to an analysis by Derek P. Willis of the University of Maryland and reviewed by The Washington Post. Of the four members who missed more votes, two were being treated for cancer, one had a spouse who died suddenly and one was running for president. Bush’s office acknowledges she missed 100 votes over three days for a covid diagnosis, 56 votes one week after the sudden death of a loved one, and several after surgery.

Bush remains under federal investigation into use of campaign finances over allegations of improperly hiring her husband to provide security. In a Jan. 30 meeting, Bush told staff that improperly using campaign funds could be viewed as “messed up,” according to an audio recording provided to The Post.

“One thing to remember is, there are people who are very, very angry with us, powerful people who are angry with us because we say ‘cease-fire,’” she said then.

Bush also told staff that the Justice Department was investigating her to prevent the appearance of a Democratic administration avoiding looking into Democrats. She encouraged her staff to stick by her — like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s followers did while he was being investigated — and suggested that the government was using similar tactics as COINTELPRO, a reference to the 1960s-era FBI counterintelligence program to try to derail uprising radical movements.

“Look at what’s happening, the history-making moment that we are in the middle of. Do we run from it because it’s tough … or do we push through and walk through it and come out on the other side victorious for the people who need us the most,” Bush told staff. “Can I make a mistake? Absolutely, we all can make mistakes. I’m not infallible.”

In a statement responding to both the audio and the investigation, Bush said it was her “understanding from my attorneys that the investigation appears to be concluded and we are just waiting on formal word from the Department of Justice,” which she thinks will “find no wrongdoing.”

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Bell awaits a civil trial in a discrimination lawsuit filed against him by a former assistant prosecutor who claims he fired her and other prosecutors because of their age, gender and race. And though he drew support from the activist community early in his career after making his name as someone who mediated between protesters and the police, many were dismayed when he declined to prosecute Darren Wilson, who killed Brown in 2014. The Department of Justice also declined to prosecute Wilson.

Bell’s detractors also accuse him of opportunism, pointing to the fact that he had been running against Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) — a race he was unlikely to win — until shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel, when he dropped out to challenge Bush. He said that decision was rooted in his view that Bush was more interested in issues he sees as lower priorities for people in the district.

Abbie Cheeseman reported from St. Louis and Washington, D.C. Marianna Sotomayor reported from Washington, D.C. Leigh Ann Caldwell contributed to this report.