The state of Kentucky closed a majority of its primary polling stations, citing the pandemic as the reason it reduced voting locations from 3,700 in a regular year to just 170 on Tuesday.
In particular, urban centers with large populations of non-white people will be most adversely affected; Louisville, which is 70 percent Black, will have just one polling station. Lexington, another large city where 25 percent of the population is non-white, will also have one location where its citizens can cast their votes.
Notably, Kentucky is 87 percent white, which means that Louisville and Lexington contain the state’s largest population of Black and brown people. Although voters can send their ballots through mail, the deadline for requesting a mail-in ballot was June 15. Several on social media have noted the glaring demographic disparity in the cutback of polling stations in the state’s largest cities.
600,000 African-American voters.
1 polling place.
Kentucky.
How is this even legal?
It is not legal.
Republicans have to cheat to win.
Vote by mail.
This is 2020.
Not 1965.#kentuckyvotersuppression— Terry McMillan (@MsTerryMcMillan) June 23, 2020
The next time you hear the GOP getting hysterical about voter fraud threatening our elections remember that polling places in Kentucky have been cut by 95%.
— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) June 23, 2020
In Kentucky’s this primary election, Democratic state Representative Charles Booker is up against Amy McGrath, also a Democrat and the likely winner of the nomination. McGrath has received millions from Democratic donors and is expected to face-off against Mitch McConnell, the current Senator of Kentucky and the Republican Senate’s Majority Leader. McConnell is set to run for re-election in November.
However Booker, who is Black, has also received widespread support in recent months and was endorsed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Booker ran on a platform in favor of universal health care, a green new deal and criminal justice reform.
