Want to vote at Arrowhead Stadium? It’s becoming reality. Here’s who can do it
The Chiefs’ desire to turn Arrowhead Stadium into a voting location this November is becoming a reality.
The stadium will house voting machines for the presidential election in November, said Shawn Kieffer, the director of the Kansas City Board of Election Commissioners.
Any registered voters who live in the Kansas City portion of Jackson County, Missouri will be allowed to vote at Arrowhead — if they choose. The election is Tuesday, November 3.
“We’re still working out the details, but we anticipate using them as a central polling location,” Kieffer said. “We’re not going to assign any voters there, but anyone who wants to go out there to vote can.”
Throughout the offseason, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and safety Tyrann Mathieu have led voter registration efforts, even speaking to their teammates about its importance as they opened training camp last month.
After conversations with team president Mark Donovan and Chiefs chairman and CEO Clark Hunt, they prioritized opening the stadium up to voters.
“Voting registration and voter engagement, I personally believe, is very important. And people exercising their right to vote, I personally believe, is very important,” Donovan said last month, revealing the initial plans to turn Arrowhead into a voting location. “I think Patrick, Tyrann, others, I’m really proud to be associated with those guys in their efforts. I appreciate that they mentioned we’ve had those discussions, and I’ve been in those discussions.
“We have some plans to do things in and around this election that are going to be focused on, number one, awareness of the importance of voting; number two, creating awareness of the ways people can register to vote, the ways people can engage and doing that through the experts in that space.”
During warmups before Thursday’s season-opening NFL game against the Texans, Mahomes and Mathieu wore T-shirts with one word etched across the front:
Vote.
They turned their attention to voter registration as part of the response to the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a white police offer, an incident that sparked protests across the country. Chiefs ownership and management have joined those efforts, putting out videos across their social media pages encouraging people to vote.
“What I’ve really appreciated the last couple of years is how engaged the leaders on our team are,” Hunt said. “I’ll just take Patrick and Tyrann as examples — they’re very engaged; they want to make a difference; they want to do things that are going to make our country better (and) things that are going to help us get along as a country.
“You referenced Arrowhead being a polling station. That’s one of their big issues — voter registration and getting people out to vote. We’ve worked with them, and we’re working with some organizations here locally to try to encourage people to get out to vote. We’ve made an effort to get all of our players registered to vote here.”
Elsewhere in the state, Mizzou Arena in Columbia will be used as a polling place.