I've lived and voted in rural areas. Even if they had closed the convenient polling places that were typically in the nearest elementary school or nearest large

I've lived and voted in rural areas. Even if they had closed the convenient polling places that were typically in the nearest elementary school or nearest large church so that we would have had to go to the nearest town to vote--it wouldn't have actually made much difference. Since we had to go to that town for pretty much all of our groceries, consumer goods, health services, etc we were already set up so that going there was no big deal. It still can cause problems, but the problems are usually not "I don't have a reasonable way to get to my new polling place" problems. They are "Can I fit a trip to the polling place in with my Tuesday schedule?" problems. People in poor urban areas in cities with little public transportation are often actually much less mobile than people in rural areas. For them it is more likely to be a "I don't have a reasonable way to get to my new polling place" problem. But the biggest reason closing polling places correlates well with hurting Democrats is that the people who decide which ones to close tend to pick ones that they will be more likely to hurt Democrats. E.g., from 2012 to 2018 Texas closed 542 polling places in the counties that had the biggest growth in Latino and Black populations (both of which are more likely to vote Democrat) and only 34 in counties with the least growth in those populations.