Voting Rights Update

Restoring Voting Rights to former felons who have served their debt to society is a legislative priority for Kentuckians For The Commonwealth again this year.

We ended 2012 with a powerful victory on election night, some good media coverage on Kentucky Tonight, and a good rally in Lexington.  More recently, we got some good coverage in the Richmond Register and took to the streets in three different communities yesterday to talk to folks about voting rights on MLK Day. 

Now, we're hitting the ground running picking up co-sponsors for HB 70 and we already have a date set for our first hearing - next Tuesday, Jan 24th at 8:30am in the House Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee, Capitol Annex, Frankfort.

 If you can be there to help send our bill our into the full house, it would be good to have you in the room and many of us will be talking to other House members throughout the rest of the day.

Leading up to that date, we hope you have time to contact one or more legislators in House Elections and Constitutional Amendments and ask them to support the bill - particularly if you happen to be a constituent on one of these Representatives.

After that, we'll continue to focus on picking up co-sponsors in the House and getting a strong, quick vote so we can start our work in the Senate.

In the past, Senators David Williams and Damon Thayer have refused to allow the bill to even be discussed in committee in the Senate, so that's where we expect we'll have to put much of our pressure this year.

  
Please call the the toll-free Legislative Message Line at 1-800-372-7181 and leave a message for your senator and Representative, plus "members of the House Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee," "Senate Leadership" and "members of the Senate State and Local Government Committee."

It just takes a couple of minutes and that will leave a message for 25 key legislators all at once. 

The Message line is open 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. Monday-Thursday and until 6 p.m. on Friday.

And finally, our big Voting Rights Lobby Day and Rally for March 8th.  Spread the word!