The Swamps and Hills of Democracy
For settlers near Cottage Lake, a four-mile trip to the polls was rendered impossible by rough terrain, forcing a twenty-five-mile detour until local officials intervened.
The board of county commissioners was in session yesterday. Frank Heidd and a number of other voters living in the vicinity of Cottage Lake presented a petition asking for a change in the boundary line between Avondale and Woodinville voting precincts, so that they could vote at the former place. Woodinville, which has heretofore been the voting place for the large number of settlers living in the vicinity of Cottage Lake, is only a little more than four miles west from the lake in a bee line, but a swamp and a range of hills intervene and make a direct route between the two impossible. These people have therefore been obliged to go south around by Avondale to Redmond and thence north by rail to Woodinville, a distance of over 25 miles, in order to vote. Their petition asked that they might be placed in Avondale precinct, as they could reach the polling place in less than four miles. This matter resulted in an order that sections 1, 2, 11, 12, 13, 14, 25 and 26, township 26, range 5 east, should be taken from Woodinville precinct and added to Avondale. This meets the wishes of the petitioners in every respect, and hereafter a large number of voters who have been disfranchised by geographical conditions will have a chance to exert the elective privilege.
“These people have therefore been obliged to go south around by Avondale to Redmond and thence north by rail to Woodinville, a distance of over 25 miles, in order to vote.”
While we no longer face 25-mile treks to cast a ballot, the intersection of physical geography and political access remains a persistent issue in American life. This 1889 account of rural voters overcoming 'disfranchisement by geographical conditions' reminds us that the right to vote is often limited by the infrastructure—or lack thereof—that connects a community to its democratic institutions.
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