ACLU sues over move of Dodge City precinct
Suit: Spot inconvenient for Hispanic majority
WICHITA, Kan. — Moving the only polling site in Dodge City, Kansas, outside the city limits will make it more difficult for the city’s majority Hispanic population to vote because they tend to have less access to transportation and less flexibility in their work schedules, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday.
The lawsuit also seeks a temporary restraining order that would force Ford County to open a second voting location in Dodge City for the Nov. 6 election after the county sent newly registered voters an official certificate of registration that listed the wrong place to cast a ballot in the general election.
The southwest Kansas city, 160 miles west of Wichita, has only one polling site for its 27,000 residents. For nearly two decades, that site was at the civic center, in the mostly white part of town. Citing road construction, the county moved it for the November election outside the city limits to a facility more than a mile from the nearest bus stop.
The federal lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens and voter Alejandro Rangel-lopez. It names Ford County Clerk Deborah Cox as its defendant.
“We understand that there are people who believe voting is a privilege, but we don’t. It is a right that must be fiercely protected. We can and must do better,” said Micah Cubic, executive director of the ACLU in a news release announcing the lawsuit.
Cox did not immediately return a call for comment.
The iconic Dodge City of yesteryear embodied the romance of the American West, with its cattle drives and buffalo hunters, but today this western Kansas town is 60 percent Hispanic after an influx of immigrants drawn to its two meatpacking plants.
The Wichita Eagle reported that after the ACLU initially objected to the Dodge City’s single, out-of-town location. Cox forwarded to the state an ACLU letter asking her to publicize a voter help. “LOL,” she wrote in an email to Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office.
Cox told the newspaper she didn’t mean anything when she wrote “LOL,” and the move wasn’t done with any racial intention at all.
The emergency motion for a temporary restraining order asks the court to order Cox to reopen the original polling location at the Civic Center as a second site to avoid voter confusion by new voters who received an official registration notice that listed only their regular polling site, not the temporary site for the November election.
The ACLU argued in its filing that the court order was necessary to remedy the misinformation Cox sent to newly registered voters and to ensure that all residents can access the polling location.