The battle to make an X
US ELECTIONS: MINORITY GROUPS GET REMOTE SPOTS AS POLLING STATIONS
Street addresses demanded from those without it – ‘but voters are fighting back’.
Clemente Torres has proudly cast his vote in person at Dodge City’s lone polling place in every election since he became a naturalised citizen 20 years ago. This year is different.
After Republican officials said in September they would move the Hispanic-majority city’s only polling place to a remote spot outside the city limits, across railroad tracks and away from bus lines, Torres decided to vote by mail.
“I wanted to be sure I could vote,” said Torres, 57, who works at a meatpacking plant in this western Kansas city best known for its history as a Wild West outpost. “I didn’t want to take any chances.”
Torres and other voters interviewed said they were worried voting would be more difficult at the new location. Some were skeptical of the official explanation: that construction will hinder access to the usual site.
The move sparked an outcry from voting rights groups that say Republicans are trying to limit Hispanic votes. The American Civil Liberties Union asked the courts to force Dodge City to open another polling site – a request denied by a judge on Thursday.
Democrats are mobilising to rent vans, line up volunteers to drive people to the polls and set up a hotline to ask for rides.
Kansas is just one front in a broad national struggle over voting restrictions passed by Republicans, who say they are needed to combat voter fraud.
Democrats and advocacy groups are scrambling in courtrooms to resist efforts they say will stack the deck against minority voters likely to back Democrats in tomorrow’s elections, where control of the US Congress will be at stake.
The national voting rights debate has been particularly intense this year in states with tight, high-stakes election races such as Kansas, Georgia, and North Dakota.
“There are a lot of grim things happening, but people are fighting back,” said Leah Aden, deputy director of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People’s Legal Defence and Educational Fund.
On a recent afternoon in Dodge City, where about 60% of the 27 000 residents are Hispanic, many of the mostly Hispanic workers pouring out of a processing plant during a shift change were surprised to find a trio of Kansas Democrats waiting for them. “Do you know your polling place has moved?” Democratic congressional candidate Alan LaPolice asked as he and two aides handed out more than 300 packets with bilingual information on where to vote and how to call for a ride. Alejandro Rangel-Lopez, 18, a firsttime voter and a plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit, said the new polling site would make it tough on people unable to get time off from work to vote. “People can’t just leave the plants to vote,” Rangel-Lopez said.
Suspicions about the motive behind the polling place change come naturally in Kansas, where Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach, one of the country’s foremost advocates of restrictive voting and immigration laws, is in a tight race for governor against Democrat Laura Kelly.
Debbie Cox, the Republican county clerk who ordered the move, declined requests for comment on her decision to set up a new polling place about 6km from the old one. But the state’s elections director, who works under Kobach, said Cox chose the best available alternative.
Kobach has relentlessly promoted theories about the threat of voter fraud and was a leader on President Donald Trump’s disbanded election integrity commission formed to look into possible fraud in the 2016 election.
While Republicans say new voting restrictions such as tougher ID requirements are necessary to ensure honest elections or clean up voter rolls, independent studies have found that voter fraud is extremely rare.
Other states with major election races have also wrestled with voting rights issues. In North Dakota, Native American tribal leaders have mobilised to help up to 10 000 residents in rural reservations whose voting eligibility has been threatened by a state law requiring a residential address.
Many reservation residents use post office boxes.
“This is about being pushed into a corner and fighting back,” said OJ Semans, co-executive director of Four Directions, a Native American voting rights group. “We want to make sure the state thinks twice about doing something like this again.”
Studies show voter fraud is extremely rare