MARIETTA, Ohio — Voters in one Ohio county who show their school pride at the polls next month will be asked to cover up with a poncho.
Elections officials in southeast Ohio’s Washington County don’t want people coming to polling places wearing shirts or other attire promoting local schools that have hotly contested tax measures on the ballot.
Those who do show up to vote May 3 in a shirt, hat or other article of clothing with the name or mascot of one of the Marietta or Warren Local schools will be handed a poncho by a poll worker, said county elections board director Peggy Byers. Voters will be allowed to wear school colors, she said.
The school tax issues are stirring up feelings that are “kind of intense either way,” Byers said. “A lot of people are either real for them or real against them.”
Voters in the Warren Local district are being asked to approve a measure to fund new school buildings at a cost of about $200 a year to the average taxpayer. It has already been rejected three times in the past year.
