The township made national news following the 2008 presidential election, when some voters were forced to wait literally all day in pouring rain in order to vote. Many voters had to leave without casting their votes, disenfranchised by inadequate polling facilities.

Despite numerous warnings before the election that the cramped polling place would cause problems, the County Board of Elections had refused to change the location of the polling place – a tiny community center that could accommodate only two lines of voters, a small number of privacy booths, and a single ballot scanner.  And even after the 2008 fiasco, the Board of Elections rejected a petition to move the polling place to the campus of Lincoln University, where it had previously been located for years.

In January of 2010, we filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of African American residents and Lincoln University students in Chester County, charging that the County Board of Elections and Department of Voter Services deprived African-Americans in Lower Oxford East Township of their right to vote by assigning them to inconvenient and inadequate polling facilities.

Case Progress