Recent decades have familiarized the citizens of Kansas and Missouri with repeated attempts by Republican lawmakers to suppress voter participation: polling sites have been closed, voter roles cleansed, laws passed that require voters to produce proof of citizenship or absentee ballots to be notarized. And, Graves reports, this November, Missouri Republicans “hope to overturn the ‘Clean Missouri’ constitutional amendment, passed in 2018 with 62% of the vote, replacing it with something opponents say is worse than the gerrymandering process that has given Republicans 71% of the state legislature, though only 47% of Missourians in a recent poll identified as Republican or ‘leaning Republican.’”
The challenge of pandemic elections, the many crises facing the country—crises of health, economics, racism, climate change—are exacerbated by these threats to voting rights. Missouri and Kansas are not exceptions. Guaranteeing that every eligible vote can be cast and that every eligible vote counts is, perhaps, more important now than ever.