When two large cities like Lexington and Louisville – one with 350K people and the other with 600K people – each set up only one polling place for their entire city, and it closes at 6 pm, many people can’t or won’t vote.

That’s called voter suppression.

Very simply, thank you Wikipedia, voter suppression is a strategy used to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting.

It sounds like something that would happen to other people in other countries. Countries that aren’t democratic. Countries with rulers who rule by force or nefarious practices. But it’s happening in America. Here. It happened literally yesterday.

People who can’t take the day off or work from home, who punch a time clock, who rely on public transportation, or who can’t stand in line for hours are less able to participate. That means the people we’re electing don’t really represent all of the American people – they represent the vote of the privileged population. And that’s one of the reasons our government is so out of balance, and also out of touch with much of America’s people.

Every single citizen deserves the opportunity to vote. While the state of Kentucky did allow votes by mail they – we – have to do much better. We have until November to figure it out.