LOS ANGELES — The 2020 presidential election was already destined to be a highly-charged, contentious affair — even before the pandemic threw a wrench into the works. 

As COVID took root in the American consciousness, both health and elections officials struggled to find ways to ensure democracy and keep people safe.

Various organizations and local governments made overtures proposing the use of large-scale sites, like arenas and stadiums, as voting centers. But a national tragedy, and the sports world’s response to it, crystallized the idea.


What You Need To Know

  • Plans for voting super-centers developed as a response to COVID-related health concerns

  • The NBA announced plans to open team-owned facilities as voting centers when players struck following the shooting death of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin

  • Sports venues proved to be among the most popular voting centers in Los Angeles, while stadiums in other parts of the country were beaten out by smaller local venues

  • A voting expert from the University of Southern California says it's too early to know if the venues made a difference but hopes the emphasis on voting continues through future elections

Days after the Aug. 23 shooting death of Jacob Blake by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the NBA season was again in turmoil.

On Aug. 26, Milwaukee Bucks players voted to sit-out their scheduled game against the Orlando Magic in protest. Soon, the Magic joined the Bucks in solidarity, and the game was canceled. The league then suspended the upcoming slate of games as players pushed the NBA and individual team owners to develop a plan to combat racial injustice.

On Aug. 28, that plan was revealed: The league’s teams would lead a charge for voter participation. 

As part of a multi-pronged plan, the teams would turn their arenas, or other available team-controlled spaces, into voting centers or voter-registration sites. That same day, the Los Angeles Clippers announced that The Forum in Inglewood (owned by Clippers owner Steve Balmer) would host a voting super-center for the November election, joining Dodger Stadium and LAFC’s Banc of California Stadium. The Staples Center (home to the Lakers, Clippers, and NHL’s Kings) and SoFi Stadium (the NFL home of the Rams and Chargers) would follow suit.

Using these large venues as voting centers made sense to the elections officials for multiple reasons, especially during the pandemic. First, they had tremendous name recognition, and the county could bank on teams to promote voting to their fans, as the Dodgers did shortly after winning the World Series. Second, and perhaps most importantly, the size of those venues allowed for voters to be spaced out whether indoors or out, in keeping with pandemic-appropriate protocols.

The sports venues were a hit — especially well-established and historic venues. Dodger Stadium was the third-most popular voting site in the county, Staples Center was the sixth-most popular, and the Forum was in the top 15 of locations with the highest in-person voter turnout.

Philip Verbera is a manager for Community and Voter Outreach with L.A. County and helped to set up outdoor voting centers in preparation for the election. He also oversaw voting and operations at the Dodger Stadium site and was seen chatting with voters as they were entering and leaving the stadium.

“We had several people coming in all the way from Pomona…and people coming in from the Valley,” Verbera said, and all of them said the same thing: they all drove in just to vote at Dodger Stadium.

Oscar and Rainy Romero, of South Gate, drove up specifically to vote at Dodger Stadium and promised to return the next day to bring their son to the polls.

“This is our backyard. When we come up here and have this experience, it’s not just about the Dodgers, but about community, and the experiences we’ve had here over the years,” Oscar Romero said. He and his wife, like many others, took photos with a gigantic version of the county's "I Voted" sticker, backdropped by the Downtown L.A. skyline.

A few miles south of Dodger Stadium, Jemal Joseph had just left Banc of California Stadium, which stands within a stone’s throw of the legendary L.A. Coliseum. But he wasn’t drawn to the spectacle of visiting the stadium. He was already walking around neighboring Exposition Park when he realized that the stadium was a voting center.

“It was just convenience,” Joseph said.

It was actually his first time voting, he said — typically, he’s too busy working to get to the polls. But this year, “I really wanted to make it happen,” Joseph said. He wasn’t sure what to expect, but he appreciated the large, open spaces that the venue provided for the COVID-concerned.

Across the country, in Charlotte, North Carolina, the Spectrum Center wasn’t pushing incredible voting numbers — at least, not compared to other early voting sites in Mecklenburg County.

According to statistics provided by the county’s Board of Elections, the Spectrum Center (home to the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets) totaled 8,412 voters from Oct. 15 to Oct. 31, when early voting sites closed and remaining voters were required to vote at their home precincts.

That’s good enough for the fifth-lowest total among 33 early voting sites in Mecklenburg County. If voting numbers were a competition between the local sports teams, the neighboring Carolina Panthers would have had the Hornets licked — Bank of America Stadium had more than 12,000 voters over the same period. Some of the most popular sites in that county were shopping centers and school auditoriums.

But Michael Dickerson, Mecklenburg County’s Director of Elections, wasn’t bothered. In fact, he’s surprised the Spectrum Center site did as well as it did. The pandemic-driven work-from-home reality has kept many people out of Charlotte’s downtown core.

“That’s why you see some of the ones in the outskirts of the city, where they have huge populations centers, that they did so much better,” Dickerson said. Had the world been back to normal (relatively speaking), he expects that Spectrum Center would have been one of the county’s top performing sites.

Having the Spectrum Center available, however, was a “fantastic adventure,” Dickerson said, and it showed the civic responsibility that organizations like the Charlotte Hornets took during the pandemic. Dickerson even chose to vote there himself, he said, and called it a quick and easy experience. (He would’ve been out of there in only five or ten minutes, he supposed, had he not been talking to his staff on the ground.)

Mindy Romero, the Sacramento-based Director of University of Southern California’s Center for Inclusive Democracy, believes that the opening of these venues may have made voting more fun or convenient for people to vote — especially those who are fans who were excited to go to their favorite team’s venue, like the Romero family of South Gate.

But she cautioned that it’s still very early and unclear if opening up these arenas moved the needle in terms of turnout.

“I think the bigger picture for me, when I saw all of this happening with these locations, is that it was an important shift,” Romero said. “We’ve had a culture in the United States of not voting, with some of the lowest voter turnout rates of any democracy in the world. It’s generally socially acceptable to not vote.”

What the arena movement did, alongside the near-constant barrage of pleas to vote, from advertisements to email reminders to cell phone push alerts, is reinforce the importance of voting to the general public.

“I think all of that has a cumulative impact of reminding people that there’s an election — if you’re not a (regular) voter, there’s a need to be reminded — and it lifted up the importance of voting,” Romero said. “I hope we see this again next election, and we have a growing emphasis on different sectors of society to call out the importance of an election — no matter who’s on the ballot.”