Letter: Closing polling places an outrage

How does this sound for democracy in elections? In our recent election “North Carolina eliminated 27 polling places for this election, and cut hours at other sites, producing long lines that required voters to wait hours. Other Republican-controlled states freed of Voting Rights Act restrictions also dramatically cut the number of polling places, including Texas (403 poll closures), Louisiana (103), Alabama (66), and Arizona, which closed 140 of its 200 sites.”

This is quoted verbatim from Slate.com via The Week magazine. I hope the readers are as stunned, outraged, and embarrassed as I was.

We Americans are guaranteed the right to vote. Is it illegal to deny that right? Are cripplingly long lines not a de facto denial of the right to vote? This is un-American and in some ways worse than creating difficult or long ID requirements. Closing polling places ruins the voting process and makes it hard on all of us. Meanwhile, the population of the U.S. has grown since 2012. If anything, we need more polling places.

This story was originally published November 28, 2016 at 11:18 PM with the headline "Letter: Closing polling places an outrage."