To Cast Their Ballots, These Voters Will Have to Get Out of Dodge

DODGE CITY, Kan. — On Election Days past, voters cast their ballots at the only polling place in this town of 27,000: the sprawling civic center on the north side of Dodge City. But with a construction project expected to start there soon, the county clerk moved the polls this year almost 4 miles away, past the railroad tracks and beyond the city limits.

That switch, which in some places might be little more than a footnote in a local newspaper, stoked anger and was perceived by some Democrats as a blatant attempt to suppress the vote of Dodge City’s Hispanic majority. On Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to intervene and reopen the 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 ACLU foe who also happens to be the Republican nominee in this year’s extremely close race for governor.

“I feel like workers who are not allowed to leave their job to vote will not be able to,” said Ashley Romero, 18, a Dodge City resident who said she planned to vote for Democrats and who was selling papayas and limes to workers outside a meatpacking plant. Romero said she feared the new polling place would be too far away for some people, and too much trouble for those who work long hours or might not have heard about the switch. “A lot of the voters that really are going to be affected by this election are not going to be able to vote,” she said.

In Dodge City, where ballots are printed in English and Spanish and there are streets named for “Gunsmoke” and Wyatt Earp, Democrats have seized on the relocation as a campaign issue and Republicans have mostly tried to downplay its significance.

“This has gotten way out of hand,” said Debbie Cox, the county clerk, who made the decision to move to the new polling site and is named as a defendant in the ACLU lawsuit.

Cox, a Republican who, like most elected officials here, is white, vehemently rejected suggestions that the decision had anything to do with trying to prevent any group of people from voting. Cox said outside groups had latched on to the issue and created unnecessary controversy in Dodge City.

“I’m appalled at how our Hispanic population is being portrayed,” she said. Cox said advance voting was being offered in downtown Dodge City on several days, including some evenings and a weekend, and she dismissed the notion that Dodge City’s Hispanic residents were confused by the polling station change.

The new Election Day polling site, an expo center just outside town where rodeos and farm equipment shows are held, is closer to some predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods but removed from sidewalks and bus routes. As criticism has grown, Dodge City’s public transit agency, Lyft and local Democrats have all offered free rides to the polls.

With less than two weeks until Election Day, it was clear this week that many people remained confused about the change, and some saw the situation as part of a pattern of restrictive or cumbersome voting rules that have been enacted in Kansas and across the country.

During a shift change Thursday at the meatpacking plant, some people said they had not heard of the move, including one voter who said he supports Republicans. Cox said she had mailed letters to residents about the new polling place this fall, but she acknowledged that newly registered voters also received cards not long ago bearing the earlier address, not the new one.

“There is barrier after barrier after barrier being created,” said Micah W. Kubic, executive director of the ACLU of Kansas, who said a town the size of Dodge City should have multiple polling places in a mix of neighborhoods. “It is just one example of a broader culture and approach that doesn’t value citizen participation in our democracy,” he said.

In recent days, Democrats and liberal-leaning groups have mobilized to tell residents — especially the roughly 60 percent who are Hispanic — about the new polling site and to pitch their party as one that will fight for their interests. Alan LaPolice, the Democratic nominee for Congress in this traditionally Republican district, added bilingual leaflets about how to request a ride to the polls to the campaign literature he distributed Thursday to meatpacking plant workers. Ford County, which includes Dodge City, routinely votes for Republicans by landslide margins in statewide and national elections.

“I don’t want them to win on the suppression,” state Sen. Laura Kelly, Kobach’s Democratic opponent, said during a campaign stop here Friday morning. “If anything, we should turn it around and use it against them and make them pay.”

Kobach, who made his own swing through Dodge City on Friday, said he would prefer that the town have at least two polling places, given its size. But he said those decisions are made locally, and that he has no jurisdiction over them as secretary of state.

Kobach, who is known nationally for his strident views on illegal immigration and voter fraud, also defended Cox’s reasons for moving the site and scoffed at the notion that his opponent would lose votes as a result.

“Why in the world would I want to suppress votes in Ford County?” Kobach said in an interview. “I want twice as many people to vote in Ford County. I am going to win Ford County, and I want to run up the numbers as high as I can.”