Voter Empowerment
Big week in Scott County
Our Scott County KFTC chapter has a big week this week
Tonight - There will be a Scott County City Council forum at 6pm at First Baptist Church 1330 Lexington Rd. It's sponsored by M.O.V.E. Inc. and partially publicized by our allies at the NAACP.
Wednesday - Georgetown College KFTC members and friends are spearheading a voter registration drive on campus from 11am to 2pm in the heart of campus.
Thursday - There's a Scott County KFTC Chapter Meeting coming up at 7pm at the Georgetown Library. We'll also be scheduling a series of other events including phone banks that evening.
Voter registration deadline in 2 weeks
Voter registration cards must be turned by two weeks from today - Tuesday, October 9th - into the correct County Clerk's office by the end of business hours, or postmarked and mailed to either the correct County Clerk or the State Board of Elections.
Note that 17 year-olds who will be 18 on November 6th or earlier must register now so they can vote in the election.
Also note that students away at school can either use their permanent home address or their temporary school address as their voter registration address. It's completely up to them, but given that election day is a school day we encourage students to consider registering at school – because they're much more likely to vote if the voting location is close and easy to get to.
Weekend's Rally For Recovery a big boost to our Voting Rights campaign
This past weekend, our allies at People Advocating Recovery (PAR) held their big, annual Rally For Recovery in Louisville and KFTC members were invited as always to talk to people about our campaign to restore voting rights to former felons who have served their debt to society.
In all, we collected over 250 postcards in support of voting rights for former felons, registered half a dozen voters, and helped over a dozen former felons to start the process to request their rights back through the Governor's office.
Some of the former felons we met were veterans of the armed services or otherwise people who had served their time long ago. Few had any idea what the process might be to get voting rights restored in Kentucky and some had been given a lot of misinformation in the past.
KFTC registers 252 voters at EKU
Last week, the Madison County chapter of KFTC partnered with Eastern Kentucky University for a Rock the Vote festival on campus. Despite the rain, hundreds of students gathered for a cookout and live music. Chapter members Margaret Ricketts and David Fields, along with student volunteers, registered two hundred fifty-two voters over the course of the day.
At lunch the rush to register was so long that a registration table and clipboards in the crowd still left people in line. But they waited patiently. Many students were excited about the opportunity to vote in their first presidential election.
Disenfranchisement of Kentuckians serving time for misdemeanors
One of KFTC's major statewide campaigns is to restore voting rights to former felons who have served their debt to society. But a little know fact is that Kentuckians convicted of even the most minor misdemeanors who happen to be serving jail time on Election Day also lose the right to vote (Kentucky Constitution, section 145)
Note that Kentuckians who are in jail for, but who have not been convicted of either a felony or a misdemeanor, may request an absentee ballot by contacting the County Clerk in the county they are registered to vote in.
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