In 2008, during Barack Obama's first presidential campaign, he won the state of Indiana thanks to voters in Marion County, who voted for him by a large margin.

According to the IndyStar, during the eight years Obama was in office, GOP officials reduced the number of early voting stations in Democratic stronghold Marion County while increasing the number of early polling places in Republican Hamilton County.

Hamilton County's early polling station count was increased to three for the 2016 election; by 2016, Marion County went from having three early polling places to one.

Besides being reliably Democratic, Marion County also has a large black population, and its borders include the state's capital, Indianapolis.

The IndyStar reports that these changes had a significant impact on the last election.

The paper found that there was a 63 percent increase in absentee voting in Hamilton County and a 26 percent decrease in absentee voting from 2008 to 2016.

Absentee ballots are relevant here because all early votes are counted as absentee ballots.

So what do those percents equate to? Lucky for you and I, the folks at Slate did the math:

These numbers mean that there is now only one early voting location for every 100,000 Hamilton County voters compared to the one station for every 700,000 Marin County voters.

In Marion County, that translates into massive wait times for early voting. And it also puts early voting beyond the reach of those lacking access to transportation.

With the number of polling stations reduced, Marion County's voting totals shrank. The data show that 11,261 fewer people voted in Marion County in 2016 than in 2008. However, the number of voters in Hamilton County increased by 27,376.

In an effort to restore Marion County's access to early voting, Common Cause Indiana and the NAACP's Indianapolis branch have filed a lawsuit alleging that the reduction of early voting stations in Marion County strips black citizens of their right to vote in direct violation of the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses.

Both groups also argue that the move is a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

And they aren't alone in their fight.

Indianapolis Mayor Joseph Hogsett (D) told the IndyStar that there have been four approved attempts to increase the number of early voting stations in Marion County, but that all four tries were blocked by a GOP lawmaker.

Marion County, Indianapolis

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