When our legal representative, the ACLU of Kansas, wrote Ford County Clerk Debbie Cox last year asking her support for a voter rights protection effort, Cox famously forwarded the letter to the Secretary of State’s office with the reply, “LOL.”
Well, $90,000 into this current voting rights effort, this is no laughing matter.
We want to settle this lawsuit before those legal costs double -- and that is a real possibility as Cox continues to dither and stall.
LULAC and our co-plaintiff Alejandro Rangel-Lopez, remain open to settlement offers, we just need Cox to propose concrete plans addressing our voting access concerns. There’s obviously more than enough funding and equipment.
Cox told a reporter last fall, for example, that she had more than 40 voting machines, 10 of which she’d set up in Dodge City. Where are the other 30 machines? With those machines and a portion of the money she’s spent on lawyers, we could have the polling stations we deserve already.
Let’s settle this.
It seems to us that $90,000 would have been well spent on expanding voting access, but it’s an awfully steep price to pay for pride.
Madaí Rivera is the Director of the Kansas State Director of the League of United Latin American Citizens.