American democracy is cracking. These forces help explain why.
The lawsuit against Dodge City is one of several ongoing lawsuits across the country filed by citizens who have questioned the way their local offices are elected. They come with two ongoing lawsuits against the general school board systems in the Houston domain and in Maryland, where Black citizens and the LDF sued a provincial board, an election board and a school board this month.
Dodge City responds that it’s not uncommon for cities of its length to have large districts and that its Latino citizens are not concentrated in certain neighborhoods but live in the city. Some officials said racial representation in city leadership would come naturally over time.
But not everyone agrees. Luciana Martinez, who worked for the city, said other members of the network continually asked her to run for Dodge City commissioner and she turned them down each and every time.
“I don’t do it because I don’t think I would have a fair chance,” Martinez, 58, said as she stirred a pot of rice for her grandchildren at home. Pain runs through her arm, shoulder and back from arthritis, which she says was due to the grueling eight years she spent cutting meat in local factories.
“That’s how it’s always been. It’s always been the good ol’ boys thing,” she said.
After the civil rights movement sparked the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, many local communities scrutinized the effects of at-large elections, particularly in Southern states where Black voters had been disenfranchised for years.
These considerations led to a 1967 law requiring all members of Congress to be elected in single-member districts. But the approach of electing local governments — city councils, county councils, school forums — was left to the discretion of local communities, Deuel Ross said. , Deputy Director of Litigation at LDF.
Although racist election politics were outlawed, black Americans “still couldn’t choose the candidates they were looking for because they were faced with such broad election agendas,” said Michael Kang, a law professor at Northwestern University and an expert on voting rights.
“General systems are largely an ancient relic,” said Seth of the Brennan Center.
Seth co-authored a November report on election systems in Georgia’s county governments. It concluded that counties that elected all of their members on a blanket basis reflected far less of the racial makeup of their communities than those that elected them across districts.
The at-large systems have become “the quintessential way to stifle minorities,” said Ross of the LDF.
Filibusters at the local level, he said, also affect the political trajectory of emerging candidates of color at the national and state levels.
Some cities and their leaders find it helpful to take at least some general positions, said Jim Brooks, director of infrastructure practices for the National League of Cities, an organization that advocates for and convenes city leaders and staff. Brooks said such hybrid systems can be a way to bring together some councilmembers who express neighborhoods and others who think about the desires of an entire community.
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However, lawsuits challenging the general election have increasingly been filed in suburbs and small towns, experts said, places that have noticed demographic shifts in recent years as other people of color move away from urban spaces and into the rest of the suburbs that were previously historically white. and the countryside. Demands for voting rights are also increasingly focused on expanding access to Latinos, who have now surpassed African Americans as the largest minority, and Asian Americans, a small but developing segment of the population.
On a large billboard welcoming visitors into town, Dodge City’s name is accompanied with a slogan: “We save the West for you.” The Miss Kitty’s Café appears after, named after the saloon owner in the famed western television series “Gunsmoke,” which is set in Dodge City.
Downtown, symptoms of Dodge’s cowboy roots begin to fade, as retail stores called La Centroamericana, Los Vaqueros Taqueria Cantina, Dulcería los Angeles Chiquita and Mariscos Nayarit line the streets.
One of the city’s old mottos is “Go to hell with Dodge. ” And in recent decades, thousands of people have done it.
Immigrant staff, usually from Mexico, Central and South America, have found their way to this southwestern corner of Kansas, lured by jobs at the area’s four meatpacking plants, which are known to pay more than minimum wage. Since then, the staff has bonded through friends and family and put down roots with young people and grandchildren in Dodge City.
In 2000, Latinos were 42 percent of the population. More than two decades later, Latinos now make up almost two-thirds of the population, according to the 2022 Census. White residents are now only 28 percent. Among registered voters, 44 percent are Hispanic and 45 percent are White, according to a Washington Post analysis using data from the political data firm L2.
But the demographics of the city’s elected officials have been replaced by their population.
The lawsuit challenging Dodge City’s general election was filed through two Latin American residents, Miguel Coca and Alejandro Rangel-Lopez, and supported by several groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas. Filed in December 2022, it states that no candidate was favored by a majority of the Latino electorate has been elected to the commission in more than two decades, bringing with it times when applicants who did well in districts with a high concentration of Latinos, however, failed to win elections due to their poor functionality in white areas.
After the complaint was filed, Dodge City Commissioner Joseph Nuci, who was elected in 2020, said in a statement that the claim was “categorically false” and that he was Hispanic. The allegations in the lawsuit, he said, “misrepresent our commission and are just an attempt to divide our wonderful city. “
The two plaintiffs in the lawsuit declined to comment, but ACLU attorney Jonathan Topaz said that regardless of how Nuci identifies, Nuci was elected primarily through the white electorate in Dodge City, not Latinos, and is not considered a “preferred candidate” through the Latino community. which is the subject of the Voting Rights Act. There are also no Latinos on the school board, whose members are also elected citywide, one member said.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs claim that Latinos are white citizens on a number of key measures.
Census data shows that approximately 16% of Dodge City’s Hispanic citizens live below the poverty line, more than twice the age of white citizens. Ninety-five percent of white citizens graduated from high school, compared to 61 percent of Latinos. More than one-third of white citizens have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Less than 7% of Latinos have it.
“Surely it is critical that we deliver on the promise of American democracy and that Latinos in Dodge City or minority teams across the country are able to similarly participate in the political process, which is precisely what the Voting Rights Act seeks to do,” Topaz said. , one of the attorneys assigned to the case.
The lawsuit also cites a 2011 report through a representative hired across the county, which includes Dodge City, that warns the city was in danger of prosecution and conceivable action by the U. S. Department of Justice if it did not reconsider its at-large election.
In 2018, the city made national headlines when its only polling station was moved out of city limits and more than a mile from a bus stop, and then when the new electorate obtained a registration certificate in the mail with the polling station address.
“That’s more than a decade of election effects and more than a decade of voting rights for the Latino network diluted through the Dodge City election system,” Topaz said.
As she dipped tortillas into salsa, her grandchildren running through the kitchen, Martinez said she believes Latino applicants have been passed over for city jobs and that the city has not done a good job making Latino business owners aware of city services and grant opportunities. She said she hopes the lawsuit will help her grandchildren feel like the city offices she has felt were closed to her would be open to them.
“Now I’m here, in a position to teach my grandchildren that they can be whatever they need,” she said. “We need them to know, but we need it to be real. “
In response to the lawsuit, which is scheduled to go to trial in February, the city argued in a court filing that Dodge City “goes above and beyond to integrate immigrants into the community.”
“Plaintiffs strive to reach conclusions about discriminatory intent where there is none,” the city’s attorneys added.
In an interview, City Manager Nick Hernandez said the city commission’s makeup will eventually reflect the city’s demographics without legal involvement.
“That will naturally change over time, as network paintings and demographics change,” said Hernandez, who became the first Hispanic to lead the city when he was hired through the commission in 2020. His great-great-grandfather came from Mexico to help paint on the railroad here in the early 1900s. Although many Latinos in Dodge City speak Spanish, Hernandez said they don’t, even though the deputy city manager does.
Hernandez said the city has made significant changes to serve its Latino population. Municipal workers who are fluent in Spanish get a stipend. The city effectively pushed for immigration and U. S. citizenship officials to come in to take fingerprints, documents, and naturalization interviews for citizens to save. They took the two-and-a-half-hour adventure to Wichita. Dodge City has created a cultural relations advisory council to learn how to better engage with the community, said Melissa McCoy, the city’s deputy director.
Community members are also taking matters into their own hands. Almendarez, the meatpacking plant worker, has unveiled a new effort he calls Uno Más Uno to get more than 1,000 registered Latin American young adults to vote before the upcoming election.
“If we make sure that other young people participate, the already giant Hispanic network will soon be able to provide and take part in local decisions in each and every county,” he said. “It’s my dream. “
This story is about Imperfect Union, a series that examines how Americans feel unrepresented through a political formula that fights against a collision of old and new forces.
Edited by Rosalind Helderman and Griff Witte. Editing of the work by KC Schaper. Photo editing by Natalia Jiménez. Design editing by Betty Chavarria.