This afternoon news broke that several Superior School District buildings were on a "hold and secure" status, this is happening on election day in Superior and the Re-elect Bruce Hagen Facebook page decided it was more important to get people to vote at the locked down schools rather than showing concern or support for the schools.

As a resident of Superior and someone that has generally supported Mayor Hagen, I found it disturbing that the Mayor and his campaign team not only took to Facebook to tell followers that even though the school is in lockdown, voting is still open and the incident "poses no danger to voters," they also started deleting comments made by myself and at least one other Superior resident.

The entire thread and comments have been deleted now, but you can see it below in the screenshot that was taken before deletion. Why, in 2015, would you delete something on social media like that? Any political campaign, no matter how small, should know that you can't delete anything on the internet.

Why couldn't they say something like: "The Mayor is aware of the incident and is hoping for a quick resolution and that all students and staff are safe. We will update the status of the polls when we know more." Anything would have been better than encouraging people to go vote at a locked down school.

Why are polling places in schools anyway? This seems like a bad idea to have the general public being able to just walk into any school that is a polling place. Does the school bring on extra security during election days? What precautions are being taken to make sure the kids are safe when you're inviting the general public into a secure school building during a school day?

**UPDATE** Several people, Hagen supporters I'm sure, have mentioned that the other candidate running for the Mayor of Superior, Jim Paine, also made a similar post on Facebook earlier today, which I have embed below. I will say that at least candidate Paine found the time to reply to the concerns and didn't just delete comments or the entire post.

Also, it appears that the campaigns were asked by Superior City Clerk Terri Kalan to post a message to their followers about the polls still being open. This may bring up another set of questions or concerns, but I'll leave that up for discussion on another day.

But this does not change the fact that the Hagen campaign decided that it was appropriate to delete comments of concerned citizens, never a good idea, and that is ultimately what this is about. I have no political agenda and despite what one commenter had to say, I DO NOT hate freedom.

Facebook
Facebook
loading...

There has been some concern about the Superior Middle School polling place. The school is closed but the POLLS ARE OPEN. Please let us know if you have any problems voting.

Posted by Jim Paine for Mayor on Tuesday, April 7, 2015

More From MIX 108