Volunteers traveled to Dodge City, Kansas, to help voters get to their controversial polling place

(Image credit: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

published 7 November 2018

To ensure that all voters in Dodge City, Kansas, had the chance to cast their ballots, volunteers from as far away as Denver and New York City came in to give them rides to their contested polling place.

Dodge City has just one polling location, and about a month before the election, Ford County clerk Deborah Cox moved it from the Civic Center in the middle of town to the Expo Center outside city limits. More than half of Dodge City's population is Hispanic, and the ACLU filed a lawsuit, arguing that moving the polling place outside of the city might disenfranchise voters. A judge ruled last week that it was too late to do anything, because opening a second polling place might cause confusion and do more harm than good.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that volunteers assisted residents who didn't know where to vote, and gave others rides to the Expo Center. Three women rented a charter bus to drive voters to the polling place, and several voters said they took a shuttle the city provided. Alejandro Rangel-Lopez, the plaintiff in the ACLU case, said it was "exciting" to vote for the first time, and hopes that during the next election, there will be more places to vote — other towns the same size as Dodge City have five polling places, he noted, not one.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Explore More

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox