Poll workers in state that has seen some of the US’s worst mass shootings given training on ‘active shooter’ situation, and other areas of country may follow

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Colorado poll workers are now being trained on how to respond to a mass shooting at the voting booths.

Election officials in Denver and Aurora have added the trainings to their roster of staff preparation this year, and other areas across the state and the country may follow.

“This is something we pay a lot of attention to in Colorado, because of the terrible experiences that we’ve had,” Matt Crane, the county clerk who oversees elections in Arapahoe County, said. “We want to make sure we’re as prepared as possible.”

Colorado has seen some of the country’s worst mass shootings, including the July 2012 massacre at a movie theater screening of The Dark Knight Rises, and the 1999 school shooting at Columbine high school. The state also had a school shooting at Arapahoe high school in 2013 and an attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs in 2015.

“This campaign year has been very interesting, to say the least,” Crane said. “The rhetoric has been a little raised from other years. I just think in today’s day and age, it’s better to send your people out as prepared as possible, as opposed to waiting for something to happen, and then you train them.”

Poll workers are prepped to deal with a variety of potential disasters, including fires, water main problems and electrical outages. Adding mass shooting training to that list “is not a typical practice across the country,” said Matthew Masterson, the vice-chair of the federal Election Assistance Commission.

But, Masterson added: “It’s not the first I’ve heard of that.”

In Denver, poll workers will complete an online module on how to respond to active shootings, Amber McReynolds, the director of elections, said. In previous years, some election staff have received in-person training on mass shootings, but this year “the active shooter training is required for all the election judges that will be in the field,” McReynolds said. The training module was repurposed from an local government active shooter training.

Denver has not received any specific threats, McReynolds said.

In Arapahoe County, where Aurora is located, poll workers will now trained in person by the sheriff’s department on “active threat protocols”.

This includes how to respond to an active shooter: evacuate if you can, hide or lockdown if evacuation is not possible, and confront the shooter only as a last resort.

Learning how to monitor for strange behavior is another part of the training: “We give them a list of things to look for,” Crane said.

Crane said that Denver and Aurora were sharing overviews of their plans with other counties across the state.



In Philadelphia, election commissioner Lisa Deeley said the commission might discuss the issue of mass shootings with law enforcement officers, and then consider measures the commission might take.

“It’s one of the many things that we are contemplating prior to election day,” she said. “There’s a lot that we have to hash out, and it’s a new unfortunate reality that we have to think about these things.”



Election officials in some other states said they do not have any shooting trainings.

In St Louis, Missouri, “the security is basically provided by the St Louis police department,” said Erv Switzer, the chair of the St Louis board of elections commissioners. The department assigns officers to a special election detail, and those officers “will be at numerous locations in a roving manner,” he said.

In Louisiana, election officials did not have active shooter trainings for poll workers, said Meg Caspar, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana secretary of state’s office, and they were not anticipating any violence at the polls.

“We’re not a swing state,” Caspar said.