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Originally Posted by '[MERIT
Sleep well! Hope I can do the same soon.
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^ Thanks! I hope you had a good night's sleep too. With my morning coffee, I'm learning that the voter supression going on in Dodge City is more obviously anti-democratic than I previously mentioned. This is closer to what has been happening:-
Prior to 2016 the Republicans decided that one Polling Station was sufficient for a town of 13,000. That one Polling Station had to serve ten times as many voters as the national average, which meant long, long queues for everyone, but probably meant bigger problems for people with low-prestige, on-the-clock jobs, i.e. lower-middle class/working class voters. Also this lone Polling Station was in a civic center in a white suburb:
" The civic center just happens to be in the heart of the white part of Dodge City and next to the country club and its golf course,". Handy for some, I suppose, but probably not for Latino voters living the wrong side of the tracks.
Voter turnout in 2016 suggested how effective that limited access to a Polling Station was: 61% of whites, 17% of Latinos turned out to vote in 2016.
Currently, inspired by the success of their obstructionist approach, Republican Ms.Cox, the county clerk, has ramped up the same technique by moving the city's only polling station out of town completely, to a warehouse in the desert that is one mile from the nearest bus stop. To add insult to injury, the move was announced to hundreds of newly-registered voters by giving them the
wrong address for the new polling station. This is such a blatant ploy to disrupt the exercise of voting rights that:-
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On Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to intervene and reopen the [old] civic center for voting. The swift backlash and widespread attention to Dodge City’s change came in no small part because of restrictive voting laws championed by Kansas’ secretary of state, Kris Kobach, a frequent A.C.L.U. foe who also happens to be the Republican nominee in this year’s extremely close race for governor.
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Looking forward, in response to the pending law suit Ms.Cox has intimated that polling facilities might be revised in time for the 2020 election, but she has no plans improve things for the midterms. No plans to provide polling stations in local schools for example, which would surely be the logical, low-budget approach if the authorities had any interest in encouraging unfettered democratic representation by the people, for the people.
I'm glad you liked this quote, MicShazam - it gives me an excuse to repeat it:-
" If a candidate is making it difficult for people to vote, you shouldn't vote for him."