On October 18, 2018, the Associated Press reported that the Ford County clerk in September had decided to move Dodge City’s only polling place to a location 15 minutes away from the nearest out-of-town bus stop.
As soon as the news began to receive national and statewide attention, people from across the country contacted the Kansas Democratic Party, asking what they could do to help. Within 24 hours, the KDP sprang into action with a plan.
Together, we organized attention from around the country, putting up TV, radio, newspaper, Facebook, and print ads in both English and Spanish to spread the word about what we were doing to make sure registered voters were able to cast their votes before or on Election Day. We rented buses and ramped up our local canvassing, skyrocketing the number of submitted advance ballots in Ford County to the largest share of any county in Kansas – from 26.5% in 2014 to 52.6% in 2018!
