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

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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.

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Our Staff
By Our StaffJun 10, 2020
Our Staff
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.

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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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Make safe states matter

Richie is co-founder and senior advisor of FairVote.

It’s time for “safe state” voters to be more than nervous spectators and symbolic participants in presidential elections.

The latest poll averages confirm that the 2024 presidential election will again hinge on seven swing states. Just as in 2020, expect more than 95 percent of major party candidate campaign spending and events to focus on these states. Volunteers will travel there, rather than engage with their neighbors in states that will easily go to Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. The decisions of a few thousand swing state voters will dwarf the importance of those of tens of millions of safe-state Americans.

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One of my clearest, earliest memories of talking about politics with my grandfather, who helped the IRS build its earliest computer systems in the 1960s, was asking him how he was voting. He said, “Everyone wants to make it about up here,” he said as gestured high above his head before pointing to the ground. “But the truth is that it’s all down here.” This was Thomas Mascareñaz’s version of “all politics is local” and, to me, essential guidance for a life of community building.

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In many respects, last week’s Democratic National Convention was indeed conventional. The party faithful gathered in a basketball arena in Chicago for speeches carefully calibrated to unite factions and define the central messages of the Harris-Walz campaign. It was a ceremony, a celebration and a storyline — just like the Republicans’ convention last month, and many conventions in years past.

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It is challenging for philanthropic funders to get started and stay focused when it comes to strengthening democracy. The vagaries of our political system — really a complex system of systems cast on a continental scale — make it hard to know where to even begin. There are dozens of solutions that could be worthy of support. Alas, none are backed by dispositive evidence indicating that they are the single-best way forward. Then, every second and fourth year, elections reset the stage of democracy and reshuffle the cast of characters, often in unsettling ways.

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