April 16, 2020 at 03:15pm
Kentucky is one of just 8 states that don’t generally allow voters to vote by mail and that haven’t expanded their vote-by-mail options in the face of the current pandemic. Connecticut, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas are the other 7.
As it stands now, these are the reasons someone can have to request an absentee ballot in Kentucky:
April 15, 2020 at 10:53am
The final vote on Senate Bill 2 happened yesterday evening (April 14) to override Governor Beshear's veto.
If you want to know which representatives voted for a complicated 57-page bill to make it harder to vote in the middle of a pandemic, that's the representatives with the green "y"s next to their names (or you can view the roll call votes here). The Senate passed the same veto override earlier in the day. Then they celebrated suppressing the vote.
SB 2 is not slated to go into effect until the General Election in November, but it's not clear whether ID offices will be open then (they're closed now). Even so, many Kentuckians simply don't have or need photo IDs, particularly elderly Kentuckians and lower income Kentuckians who don't drive.
April 9, 2020 at 10:27am
Will you take a few minutes to tell legislators not to override Gov. Beshear’s veto of Senate Bill 2?
We don’t need slower voting lines, more restrictions that make it harder for registered voters to vote, or to implement a new and complicated 57-page bill to limit voting. Not now and not ever.
April 3, 2020
Lexington Herald-Leader
Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear on Friday vetoed a controversial bill that would have required people to show photo identification before they could vote in Kentucky elections.
In his veto message, Beshear wrote Senate Bill 2 “would create an obstacle to the ability of Kentuckians to exercise their right to vote, resulting in fewer people voting and undermining our democracy.”
March 19, 2020
Lexington Herald-Leader
In the middle of a worldwide pandemic and national crisis, when every credible governmental official and health expert is telling us to practice social distancing and stay at home, the Kentucky legislature continues to meet. It is considering bills that have nothing to do with helping the state through the coronavirus crisis.
What a perversion of democracy.
March 5, 2020 at 02:18pm
We had our Healthy Democracy Day in Frankfort yesterday bringing about 100 Kentuckians to Frankfort to share their vision for a real Democracy in Kentucky and to fight for it.
We had 9 lobby teams, recruited 7 bill co-sponsorships, had 24 legislative meetings, had 15 powerful speakers, and really laid the groundwork to stop SB 62 this session, and pass HB 6 next session while weaving an overall vision of what kind of Democracy we want more than we have before in Frankfort.
February 24, 2020 at 01:41pm
We’ve been pushing to restore voting rights of people with felonies in their past in Kentucky for 15 years. We’re closer now than ever, but some Senate Republicans are answering this call with voting rights legislation that doesn’t actually give anyone their right to vote back. It will come up for a vote in the Senate tomorrow (Tuesday, 2/25), so calls are needed urgently!
February 19, 2020 at 08:46am
With information from the Campaign Legal Center's RestoreYourVote.org tool, KFTC has developed a decision tree to use in the field to help people determine if Governor Andy Beshear's Executive Order restoring voting rights to 140,000 Kentuckians applies to them. Here's a link to the PDF and an image of it is below.
Click the image to enlarge
February 6, 2020 at 12:15pm
Over 36 hours, we had three big voting rights events – a Voting Rights Lobby Day, a Criminal Justice Panel Discussion, and a Press Conference for HB 6.
Voting Rights Lobby Day
In all, we had 34 documented meetings with legislators, 8 lobby teams, and 28 grassroots lobbyists plus the Kentucky Council of Church's great Prayer Day of Action on Voting Rights and 60 UFCW workers there who talked to legislators about HB 6 as a part of their meetings.
Our members built up their confidence in speaking truth to power and we had frustrating and yet valuable conversations with foes and allied legislators alike.
We got a lot done today and we can build on it. Come join us in Frankfort to continue the work!
January 23, 2020 at 05:26pm
KFTC members were in Frankfort and on the phones yesterday to fight Senate Bill 2, a photo voter ID law designed to make it harder for some Kentuckians to vote by creating new hurdles for them. It’s especially troubling for young, elderly, low income and people of color communities – people who are less likely to have or need a photo ID.
SB 2 is supposed to make it harder for people to impersonate someone else on election day. But even the bill's supporters at the hearing couldn't come up with even one example this century of any time anyone tried to do that in Kentucky.
To address this non-existent problem, they’re trying to pass a complicated 66-page bill that restructures a lot of our voting process and they’re trying to do it all in a hurry.
We ought to be making it easier for citizens to vote, though, not harder.
