Voting Rights work moves beyond legislature to field work

The Kentucky Voting Rights Coalition together has accomplished a lot in these last few months:

• Virtual Lobby Day for a Healthy Democracy with over 70 participants (legislative meetings, a lobby training, social media training, letter to the editor training, spokesperson training, generated tons of calls to the legislative message line and good outreach through social media, and had a fantastic virtual rally with powerful stories in the afternoon).  Thanks especially to Pastor E, Shelton McElroy, Bonifacio Aleman, Savvy Shabazz, Dee Pregilsco, and Debbie Graner for leading the virtual rally.
• The Kentucky Council of Churches led a strong Virtual Prayer and Action Day about Voting Rights
• Multiple phone banks and text banks to reach people on this issue and connect them with the legislative message line
• Strong virtual lobby trainings and issue trainings
  

HB 232, our bill to restore voting rights to people with felonies in their past, was sponsored by Republican Jason Nemes and we recruited 17 cosponsors including another 4 Republicans and 13 Democrats. And yet our bill wasn't even assigned to a committee by members of House leadership.

According to our data match, of the 190,000 people with felonies in their past who got their right to vote back a year ago, 14,255 are currently registered and 6,653 people of those voted. The numbers are likely a little higher than that, but this is as close as we can get with the data we have. We have the opportunity to do a lot better this year, as Covid becomes less of a threat.

Since the General Assembly, we’re dived into field work, setting up voter registration tables and training, and circulating the voting rights petition.

We just had a strong Voting Rights Coalition call where we broke up into teams to schedule next steps related to field work, training, texting and lobbying.

If you'd like to join one of these teams, let Dave Newton know at [email protected] and we can invite you to upcoming meetings.

• Lobbying
• Training
• Louisville Field Work
• Lexington Field Work
• Texting Campaign
• Interviewing/ Storytelling