One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy

by Carol Anderson

It’s no surprise, then, that attention soon turned to Dodge City, Kansas. The county clerk there, Debbie Cox, decided in October, with the election just a month away, to move the one and only polling place for thirteen thousand voters to a site beyond the city limits, a mile from public transportation, and not readily accessible by walking.43 Her office then sent newly registered voters the wrong address to cast their ballot.44 None of this suggested happenstance. Dodge City was 60 percent Hispanic. The city had only that one voting site, while the surrounding county, which was majority white, had three locations that remained untouched. And, as in Georgia, Kansas’s secretary of state, Kris Kobach, notorious for voter suppression and rabid nativism, was also running for governor and refused to step down from overseeing his own election.