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Governor Cox’s Prayer Wasn’t Just Misguided—It Was Dangerous

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Big cities in Kentucky must have more than one polling place, lawsuit argues

Kentucky voting

Voters in Louisville last November -- not at the convention center that, for now, is the only place in the city to have in-person primary voting June 23.

John Sommers II/Getty Images
The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumJun 10, 2020
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
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Opening just one polling site in several of Kentucky's most densely populated counties would create "significant voter suppression," a new lawsuit maintains in asking a federal judge to order more in-person voting options for the primaries in two weeks.

The suit was filed Monday in federal court by Republican state Rep. Jason Nemes and voters from five counties in the Louisville, Lexington and Covington metro areas.

All of them are planning to have just one place to vote in-person June 23 in an effort to minimize the risk of coronavirus exposure at the polls, but the lawsuit says those plans will pose more health risks than they eliminate and effectively disenfranchise thousands. .

The suit wants the court to require more than one polling location in counties with more than 35,000 registered voters. To allow otherwise, it says, would violate the Voting Rights Act and the constitutional free speech and equal protection rights of Kentuckians by causing "the needless deprivation of their fundamental right to vote."

The primary has been postponed from May and all registered voters are being allowed to mail in their ballots. While preparing for a record surge in absentee voting, many counties have limited the number of in-person voting sites not only to curb the spread of the virus but also because of an expected shortage of poll workers.

But the consequences could prove catastrophic especially in the two biggest cities, where a convention center in Louisville (which has 616,000 registered voters) and a football stadium in Lexington (243,000) are the only locations now being prepared. The counties are both solidly Democratic and are home to three-fifths of the state's black electorate. And the hottest contest on the ballot is the Democratoc primary for the right to challenge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The suit cites the Wisconsin primary in April, arguing the lack of in-person polling locations led to a decline in voter participation because people did not have time to wait in line or feared for their health if they did.

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Young people worldwide form new parties to reshape politics—yet America’s two-party system blocks them.

Getty Images, J Studios

No Country for Young Politicians—and How To Fix That

In democracies around the world, young people have started new political parties whenever the establishment has sidelined their views or excluded them from policymaking. These parties have sometimes reinvigorated political competition, compelled established parties to take previously neglected issues seriously, or encouraged incumbent leaders to find better ways to include and reach out to young voters.

In Europe, a trio in their twenties started Volt in 2017 as a pan-European response to Brexit, and the party has managed to win seats in the European Parliament and in some national legislatures. In Germany, young people concerned about climate change created Klimaliste, a party committed to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as per the Paris Agreement. Although the party hasn’t won seats at the federal level, they have managed to win some municipal elections. In Chile, leaders of the 2011 student protests, who then won seats as independent candidates, created political parties like Revolución Democrática and Convergencia Social to institutionalize their movements. In 2022, one of these former student leaders, Gabriel Boric, became the president of Chile at 36 years old.

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How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground. ~ Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Col. Edward Carrington, Paris, 27 May 1788

The Problem We Face

The U.S. House of Representatives was designed as the chamber of Congress most directly tethered to the people. Article I of the Constitution mandates that seats be apportioned among the states according to population and that members face election every two years—design features meant to keep representatives responsive to shifting public sentiment. Unlike the Senate, which prioritizes state sovereignty and representation, the House translates raw population counts into political voice: each House district is to contain roughly the same number of residents, ensuring that every citizen’s vote carries comparable weight. In principle, then, the House serves as the nation’s demographic mirror, channeling the diverse preferences of the electorate into lawmaking and acting as a safeguard against unresponsive or oligarchic governance.

Nationally, the mismatch between the overall popular vote and the partisan split in House seats is small, with less than a 1% tilt. But state-level results tell a different story. Take Connecticut: Democrats hold all five seats despite Republicans winning over 40% of the statewide vote. In Oklahoma, the inverse occurs—Republicans control every seat even though Democrats consistently earn around 40% of the vote.

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Stolen Land, Stolen Votes: Native Americans Defending the VRA Protects Us All – and We Should Support Them

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