Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, a Republican, speaks to a crowd while accepting the 2024 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. (Screenshot via JFK Library Foundation livestream)

Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams is mulling a run for governor, according to a recent interview with his law school’s publication.?

An alumni profile of Adams entitled “Election Defender” in the Harvard Law Bulletin says he is considering a run for governor as he is term-limited as the state’s top election official. Adams graduated from Harvard Law School in 2001. He won bids for Kentucky secretary of state in 2019 and 2023.?

In response to the Kentucky Lantern on Monday, Adams’ spokesperson Michon Lindstrom said right now Adams “is focused on running a smooth presidential election and will discuss any future plans at a later date.”?

Speculation about Adams making a future gubernatorial bid swirled after he gave a victory speech last November that focused on topics outside of the purview of the secretary’s office, including public safety, quality of life and the state’s long-term future. When asked at the time by the Lantern about his future political plans, Adams said it was too soon to say.?

“It is way too early to try to predict what I’ll be doing in four years,” Adams said. “I think I showed my party I’m a strong player on the bench. I have found a way to reach across the divide and over-perform in places Republicans generally can’t compete.”

In the 2023 general election, Adams was the top vote-getter after he gained more than 784,000 votes.?

Adams was awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award earlier this year. He was selected for his work to increase voting days in Kentucky, as well as for standing up for free and fair elections despite ire from fellow Republicans and death threats from election deniers.?

The Harvard Law Bulletin interview focused on Adams’ career after graduating from Harvard Law and how he first became interested in civics. According to the article, Adams says? that state government fits his style more than more polarized national politics.

Randall Weddle, then a candidate for London mayor, listens as Gov. Andy Beshear helps celebrate the opening of WB Transport's new warehouse in April 2022. (Screenshot with permission of WYMT)

London Mayor Randall Weddle, currently under the scrutiny of Kentucky campaign finance regulators for excess contributions to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s 2023 reelection efforts, is continuing to make hefty political contributions.

Weddle donated $75,000 on May 1 to the Democratic Governors Association, according to a disclosure that the DGA filed recently with the Internal Revenue Service.

Weddle and his family, employees and business associates generated the largest bundles of political contributions for Beshear’s reelection. An analysis by Kentucky Lantern last year showed Weddle’s group gave at least $305,000 — and probably more — to Beshear’s reelection campaign and the Kentucky Democratic Party in 2022-23.

Beshear campaign, Kentucky Democratic Party return $202,000 linked to London mayor

After Kentucky Lantern’s report, the Beshear campaign and Democratic Party refunded $202,000 to Weddle because — according to Beshear’s campaign manager — that amount of contributions previously reported as being donated by various Weddle relatives and employees had actually been drawn on a credit card belonging to Weddle and his wife Victoria.

It is illegal for any individual to give more than $2,100 to any state campaign committee per election, and illegal for anyone to give more than $15,000 to a state political party. The Kentucky Registry of Election Finance is investigating Weddle’s excess donations.

The controversy over the Weddle contributions for Beshear did not slow down Weddle’s donation pattern last year. He continued to make large political contributions including — with wife Victoria — $75,000 to the Democratic Governors Association (DGA)? in May of 2023.

Many Democratic donors from Kentucky gave to the DGA last year. The DGA’s purpose is to help elect Democrats as state governors, and getting Beshear reelected was the DGA’s priority last year. (The DGA spent more than $19 million on an independent advertising campaign in Kentucky in 2023 aimed at reelecting Beshear.)

Weddle’s contribution of $75,000 this May can’t help Beshear, who is now term-limited, get elected governor again.

And Weddle was not the only big Beshear donor to give to the DGA in the spring.

• Case Coal Sales, of Louisa, a company headed by Todd Case, a massive donor to Beshear’s political committees who was appointed to the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees by Beshear, gave $35,000 on May 8. (Todd Case gave $15,000 to the DGA in the spring of 2023.)
• Jack Dulworth, a Beshear insider who heads the nonprofit company that manages Beshear’s Kentucky Derby tickets and party, gave $15,000 on April 15. (Dulworth also gave $15,000 to DGA in the spring of 2023.)
• Bernie Mason, of Ashland and a principal in MBM Management, gave $15,000 on May 8. (MBM Management also gave $15,000 to the DGA in the spring of 2023.)

There were no similar contributions to the DGA from Beshear’s major Kentucky donors in the six months following his election in 2019, IRS records show.

Weddle did not return a phone message left at the London mayor’s office. The DGA did not return a phone message and emails. The Democratic Party of Kentucky did not return a phone message.

Andy Westberry, communications director for the Republican Party of Kentucky, said, “With all the controversy surrounding the previous illegal campaign contributions, I find it very interesting that Randall Weddle continues to cut these large checks.”

John Steffen, executive director of the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance, said he could not comment on the agency’s investigation beyond saying that it is continuing. He said he did not know when it will conclude.

Earlier this year attorneys for Weddle filed papers with the election registry saying that Weddle put excess contributions on his credit card only because he was assured by a fundraiser for the Beshear campaign that advancing contributions of others in such a way would be fine.

But Eric Hyers, who managed Beshear’s campaign for governor, disputed Weddle’s account of what happened saying that the first the Beshear campaign learned of possible excess contributions by Weddle came in April of 2023 and that the campaign quickly took steps to refund the money to Weddle.

If the election registry ultimately concludes a violation of campaign finance laws occurred it has the authority to impose a $5,000 fine per violation. It also can refer the matter to the state attorney general or local prosecutor for possible criminal violations.

Speaking in Bowling Green against Kentucky's abortion laws, Dr. Janet Wygal said: “No physician should be forced to wait until someone becomes sick enough to intervene with basic necessary health care because the government says so.” (Getty Images)

Kentucky Reproductive Freedom Fund members, who in June announced a pro-abortion access messaging campaign, gathered at the Warren County Courthouse in Bowling Green Thursday to say their campaign has reached 1.8 million people through digital ads.?

Ona Marshall, who founded KRFF and co-owned one of Kentucky’s last two abortion clinics, also criticized Kentucky’s lack of avenues for citizens to put abortion access on the ballot.?

“We could follow the lead of other states that are moving to protect reproductive rights,” she said. “These are states that have citizen-led ballot initiatives to protect abortion access in their state constitutions. But that choice isn’t possible in Kentucky.”?

Nevada, Colorado, South Dakota, Florida and Maryland will have abortion-related questions on the ballot this November, States Newsroom has reported. Others are working to qualify and follow suit, including Arizona, Montana, Missouri and Arkansas. Kentucky is one of 24 states that do not allow citizen-led ballot initiatives.?

Thursday’s event came two years after a judge reinstated Kentucky’s abortion ban — after a brief injunction following the fall of Roe V. Wade and subsequent trigger law.?

“Kentucky is in a health care crisis, and our choices to reverse this dire situation are being limited by lawmakers,” Marshall said. “Our freedom in Kentucky is not being protected, our freedom is being denied. Our lawmakers can repeal the abortion bans and restore our freedom.” Marshall co-owned Louisville’s EMW Surgical Center, which provided abortions Louisville’s but closed when the abortion ban took effect..?

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion, in 2022, a “trigger law” went into effect in Kentucky that banned abortions. Another law bans abortions after six weeks. Doctors have previously said many people don’t know they’re pregnant at the six-week mark.?

Later that year, Kentucky voters rejected an anti-abortion amendment that would have stated there is no right to an abortion in Kentucky’s Constitution. Only the legislature has the power to put constitutional amendments on the ballot in Kentucky.

Kentucky does not have abortion exceptions for rape or incest, though both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have filed unsuccessful bills to change that in recent years.?

Kentucky has an exception in cases where the life of the pregnant person is at risk. Dr. Janet Wygal, an OB-GYN who spoke alongside Marshall Thursday, said that’s not enough.?

“No physician should be forced to wait until someone becomes sick enough to intervene with basic necessary health care because the government says so,” said Wygal. “These laws create an environment of fear and uncertainty, not only for doctors and their patients seeking abortion care, but also for those needing the full spectrum of reproductive health care, including IVF (in vitro fertilization), contraception and cancer screenings.”?

Some elections professionals say federal law enforcement still isn’t doing enough to deter bad actors and ensure that those on the front lines of democracy are protected this fall. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Aiming to send a message, the Biden administration recently spotlighted its indictments and convictions in cases involving threats to election officials or workers.

But with no letup in reports of attacks, some elections professionals say federal law enforcement still isn’t doing enough to deter bad actors and ensure that those on the front lines of democracy are protected this fall.

“Election officials by and large have no confidence that if something were to happen to them, there would be any consequences,” said Amy Cohen, the executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors. “It is very clear that we are not seeing a deterrent effect.”

A U.S. Justice Department spokesman declined to comment for this story, instead directing States Newsroom to a webpage for the department’s Election Threats Task Force.

Launched by the Justice Department in 2021 in response to the wave of harassment of election officials that followed the 2020 election, the Election Threats Task Force works closely with local law enforcement and U.S. attorney’s offices around the country to investigate threats.

In going after those who make threats against election workers, the Justice Department is honoring a foundational purpose: The department was created in 1870 in part to protect the voting rights of southern Blacks during Reconstruction.

Run by John Keller, a top official in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, the task force also includes the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, the Civil Rights Division, the National Security Division, and the FBI. It also works with several other government agencies, including the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Department of Homeland Security.

Since its launch, the task force has brought charges in 17 cases, according to the department’s tally. Eight cases have resulted in prison time, with sentencing scheduled in several more.

In one case, brought in Nevada, the defendant was acquitted.

In March, a Massachusetts man received a three-and-a-half-year sentence — the longest won by the task force to date — for sending an online message to an Arizona election official warning her a bomb would be detonated “in her personal space” unless she resigned.

A Texas man received the same sentence last August for posting threatening messages targeting two Maricopa County, Arizona officials and their families, and separately calling for a “mass shooting of poll workers” in precincts with “suspect results.”

‘Each of these cases should serve as a warning’

Attorney General Merrick Garland highlighted these convictions and others in a May 13 speech at a task force meeting.

“Each of these cases should serve as a warning,” declared Garland. “If you threaten to harm or kill an election worker, volunteer, or official, the Justice Department will find you. And we will hold you accountable.”

But those prosecutions amount to only a tiny share of what the Justice Department has said is over 2,000 reports of threats or harassment submitted by the election community to the FBI since the task force was launched in 2021. Around 100 of those were investigated, according to the Justice Department.

The small number of investigations and prosecutions is largely due to free speech concerns. Legal experts say that anything short of a direct and explicit threat to cause physical harm may well be protected speech under the First Amendment.

“A true threat is a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence,” Keller has said. “If they don’t cross that line into invoking violence, they are generally not going to constitute a criminally prosecutable threat.”

Still, as the 2024 vote approaches, there’s little evidence that the volume of attacks against the people who run elections has declined, or that election workers feel safer.

A recent Brennan Center survey found that more than half of local election officials said they were concerned about the safety of their colleagues or staff — around the same number as in 2022, the year of the last federal election. Around a quarter worry about being assaulted at home or at work.

“This is a widespread issue in the elections community,” said Tammy Patrick, the CEO for programs for the National Association of Election Officials, and a former election official in Maricopa County. “It’s happening all across the country. It’s not just a question of it being in swing states, or just being in the city or whatever. It’s happening in a way that is a concerted campaign to create and sow chaos.”

“There is some feeling that the task force is a political tool,” said another election expert, “that allows the administration to say they care and they’re doing something.”

Troubling episodes but little followup

In March 2022, anti-fraud activists, accompanied by the local GOP chair, showed up at the office of Michella Huff, the election director for Surry County, North Carolina.

Huff said the activists tried to pressure her to give them access to county voting machines, citing what they said were flawed voter rolls. The group repeatedly threatened to have Huff ousted from her job if she didn’t cooperate, and said they planned to return with the local sheriff, though they did not do so.

Huff declined to provide access to the machines, and reported the episode to the state election board’s investigations unit.

A spokesperson for the board did not respond to an inquiry about whether the report was forwarded to federal law enforcement.

Election security advocates have urged the FBI to do more to probe efforts by supporters of former President Donald Trump to gain access to voting machines in other states, warning that the breaches could have allowed for voting machine software to be compromised.

Huff said she never heard from law enforcement on any level, despite speaking publicly about the episode.

Though Huff wasn’t physically threatened, she said she’d still like to have seen federal authorities do more to respond.

“If it is truly a threat, I think every threat needs to be looked at serious(ly), and it needs to be considered as to what the intent was, if it was successful, and what the repercussions would be if it had been successful,” said Huff. “A threat is a threat.”

More overt efforts to physically intimidate election workers also have at times spurred little law enforcement followup.

The night before South Carolina’s 2022 primaries, a Republican candidate who has promoted lies about the 2020 election posted a message on the conservative social media site Telegram, to a group of anti-fraud activists.

“For all of you on the team tomorrow observing the polls, Good Hunting,” the message said. “We have the enemy on their back foot, press the attack. Forward.”

During the voting period, groups of activists showed up at multiple polling places to verbally harass, photograph, and film election workers as they did their jobs, recounted Isaac Cramer, the executive director of the Charleston County Board of Voter Registration and Elections.

The activists called the police to at least one polling site, falsely alleging evidence of fraud by election staff. The police came, but made no arrests — though the episode left the site’s lead poll manager shaken, Cramer said.

Cramer said his office provided detailed reports on both the Telegram message and the harassment at polling sites to the Department of Homeland Security, as well as to the state election commission.

“We took that threat pretty seriously,” he said, referring to the Telegram message.

He said he received a response from DHS saying the report was being looked into, but heard nothing after that.

“I don’t know what the conclusions were, or what occurred after submitting that information,” Cramer said.

But Cramer added that the experience produced a successful effort to increase collaboration with local, state, and federal authorities — with the result that the county is much better prepared to respond to, and anticipate, similar incidents this year.

“When you’re on the defense, you’re kind of reacting to everything, and I think that’s how the past was,” said Cramer.? “And now we’re being proactive.”

‘I dread November for you guys’

Patrick, of the National Association of Election Officials, said that while she understands the need to avoid running afoul of the First Amendment, authorities must balance legitimate free speech concerns with their urgent duty to protect those conducting elections.

And, she suggested, they may not always be getting that balance right.

“We need to be really careful that we’re not allowing people to yell fire in a crowded theater,” Patrick said.? “And that we’re not allowing people to use what they are potentially claiming as their freedom of speech as a way of creating chaos in a system, or to threaten individuals who are just trying to do their job.”

In addition, election professionals say they’ve complained for years that after they submit reports about threats and harassment to the FBI, there’s often a lack of follow-up beyond an acknowledgment of receipt.

Of course, law enforcement frequently can’t share details about their work, even with those who were targeted, in order not to compromise an investigation. But Patrick said even basic information could be helpful.

“Even letting them know that the report is being worked, so it doesn’t just go into the void, and a victim knows there’s going to be a knock-and-talk, gives the individual who made that report some sense of closure,” Patrick said, referring to when federal agents show up to speak with a suspect at their home.

The problem may be exacerbated by a lack of understanding among some in the elections world about what federal law enforcement can and can’t do. Many election officials, said Cohen, of the National Association of State Election Directors, want front-end help with steps like bolstering physical security to better prepare for incidents.

“Law enforcement, and especially federal law enforcement, is only coming at the back end,” said Cohen. “Their goal is not prevention or recovery, their goal is prosecution. And it has taken our community, I think, a long time to understand what we should be expecting from DoJ.”

Ultimately, said Cohen, the prosecutions brought by the Justice Department appear to have done little to reduce the number of threats election workers are subject to today.

“I’m really grateful that DOJ has secured convictions in Arizona,” said Cohen. “But I don’t think securing convictions in Arizona three years later has actually deterred anything in Arizona.”

Indeed, Arizona has been a hotbed for election misinformation, and its election officials continue to be targeted by a consistent stream of threats, according to multiple reports.

Huff, the county election director in North Carolina, said that with a major election approaching, members of the public often express sympathy for her and her staff — an acknowledgement that the vitriol they’ve been facing is only likely to get stronger.

“Out in public, I get that,” Huff said — ‘Boy, I dread November for you guys.’”

This story has been updated to reflect the correct name of the executive director of the Charleston County Board of Voter Registration and Elections.

The Kentucky Supreme Court hears oral arguments in a candidacy challenge against Democratic Rep. Nima Kulkarni. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

FRANKFORT —?The Kentucky Supreme Court heard oral arguments Thursday in a lawsuit that could potentially lead to a sitting Democratic lawmaker being removed from the ballot.?

The day before Kentucky’s May primary election, the state Supreme Court allowed Rep. Nima Kulkarni to stand as a candidate, pending oral arguments.?

Before the primary election, the Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled that Kulkarni, of Louisville, was not a bona fide candidate and overturned a dismissal in Jefferson County Circuit Court.?

According to unofficial results, Kulkarni took 78% of the vote in the 40th House District Democratic primary in May over challenger William Zeitz. No Republican candidates filed for the election.?

The lawsuit, filed by former Democratic state Rep. Dennis Horlander, centers around the validity of Kulkarni’s candidacy papers. They had to be signed by two witnesses who are Democratic voters in the 40th District. At the time of signing, one witness was a registered Republican and changed her registration after the filing deadline. Kulkarni previously testified she thought the voter was a registered Democrat and only later became aware of the issue.?

Kulkarni defeated Horlander in the 2018 and 2020 Democratic primaries in the 40th House District. Kulkarni seeks a fourth term in office.?

The seven justices on the court asked several questions of both sides. To James Craig, Kulkarni’s attorney, Justice Kelly Thompson asked what deadline the court should consider the paperwork was finalized. This year, Kentucky’s filing deadline was Jan. 5, and Kulkarni learned of the error the following Monday, Jan. 8. Horlander did not file his lawsuit until March 8.

Craig argued it could not be the date that the lawsuit was filed.?

“We can see that the good faith action has happened by that date,” Craig said, referring to Kulkarni’s actions before the certification date.?

Of checking a person’s voter registration, which is a public record, Chief Justice Laurance VanMeter said “that is so easy to check” and candidates have an obligation to check.?

VanMeter also asked Craig what the court should do for the outcome of the election should it rule that Kulkarni was not a bona fide candidate in the primary. Craig said that it would fall to Republican and Democratic executive committees to nominate candidates, and Kulkarni could seek office again in a general election.?

Steven Megerle, Hornlander’s attorney, disagreed and said the Jefferson County Clerk would have to hold a special Democratic primary election in the 40th House District, because of recent legislation, and Kulkarni could not be an eligible candidate for that election if she is disqualified. The law says that disqualified or defeated primary candidates cannot be general election candidates unless there is a vacancy.?

While questioning Megerle, Justice Michelle Keller said she was “struggling with the notion of Rep. Kulkarni’s good faith.” As Kentucky’s justices are elected, Keller related it to her own campaign experience, noting that some candidates miss filing deadlines for campaign finance reports but “way past the time that it made any difference in the management of a campaign, any real difference.”

Megerle argued that because Kentucky has long had closed party primaries, Republicans cannot nominate Democratic candidates and vice versa.?

“This court will effectively crack open the partisan primary system, and Republicans get to nominate Democrats and Democrats can nominate Republicans,” he said.?

VanMeter said there was a situation in 1920 where Democratic voters were allowed to nominate a Republican judicial candidate before judicial races became nonpartisan.?

After arguments concluded, Megerle highlighted an amicus brief filed by Republican House Speaker David Osborne and Senate President Robert Stivers. It urges the Supreme Court to ignore a written statement from Senate Democratic Floor Leader Gerald Neal about interpreting a 1990 change to the state’s candidacy filing law. Craig had cited Neal, as he was in the legislature during that time.?

“That is really telling, the fact that the two highest ranking members of the General Assembly weighed in on this case over Rep. Kulkarni,” Megerle said.

Asked by reporters if he planned to run in a possible special election. Horlander said he would “have to give that a lot of thought.”

Kulkarni declined to comment.?

VanMeter said the court would render a decision as soon as possible.

Over the last year or more, several states?have passed legislation restricting the use of AI in political ads or requiring that it be disclosed. (Photo via Getty Images)

Members of the U.S. Senate are sounding the alarm about the threat that artificial intelligence poses to elections through its ability to deceive voters. But the prospects for legislation that can meaningfully address the problem appear uncertain.

In a Wednesday hearing, the Senate Rules Committee advanced three bills designed to counter the AI threat. But the only one to receive support from Republicans on the panel would simply create voluntary guidelines for election officials. It stops well short of restricting the use of AI in elections or even requiring disclosure of its use — steps that a growing number of states have already taken.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who chairs the Rules Committee and introduced all three measures, said the ability of generative AI to create deceptive images fundamentally threatens fair elections.

“We are going to see this resurgence of fakery and scams going on in our elections,” said Klobuchar. “And whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, whether you’re a conservative or a liberal, we cannot have our democracy undermined by ads and videos where you literally don’t know if it’s the candidate you love or the candidate you dislike.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer framed the stakes as even higher.

“Our democracy may never recover if we lose the ability to distinguish at all between what’s true and what’s false, as AI threatens to do,” said the New York Democrat, whose appearance at the hearing was a potential signal that he aims to prioritize the legislation.

AI robocalls, images

The dangers posed by AI were starkly illustrated in February, when thousands of New Hampshire voters received a robocall with an AI-generated voice impersonating President Joe Biden, urging them not to vote in the upcoming state primary. A Democratic operative working for a rival candidate has admitted to commissioning the calls.

And last June, the presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis released a video that appeared to use AI-generated images of former President Donald Trump hugging Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former chief medical adviser to Biden who is deeply unpopular among GOP primary voters.

Klobuchar added at the hearing that she wanted to keep the issue out of the “partisan milieu.” Blue, purple and red states have lately passed laws to address the AI threat, she noted. And all three pieces of legislation Klobuchar has introduced have Republican co-sponsors.

Still, there were signs that avoiding partisan politics could prove impossible.

Republicans in Congress, often led by House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, have strongly opposed previous efforts by the Biden administration to restrict the spread of political disinformation, saying they violate speech rights and give too much power to government regulators.

Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., the ranking Republican on the panel, raised similar concerns Wednesday about two of the Klobuchar bills: the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act, and the AI Transparency in Elections Act.

The Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act would bar deceptive AI video or audio relating to candidates for federal office. It was introduced in September by Klobuchar and has five co-sponsors, including Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.

The AI Transparency in Elections Act requires that political ads that use AI contain a statement disclosing its use. That measure, introduced by Klobuchar in March, is co-sponsored by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

The two bills, Fischer argued, “increase burdens on speech,” and are too vague in defining AI, creating uncertainty about whether a speaker might be subject to penalties. They also aim to federalize the issue and pre-empt state law, encroaching on state control of elections, Fischer added.

Both measures were passed out of the Rules Committee Wednesday on party-line votes, with no Republican support. (The official vote count in both cases was 9-2, because some Republicans who didn’t attend the hearing voted ’no by proxy,’ which isn’t counted as an official vote.)

The third measure, the Preparing Election Administrators for AI Act, was passed out of committee unanimously.

It would require the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to consult with the National Institute of Standards and Technology in creating voluntary guidelines for election officials for how to protect against the threat of AI in elections, especially with respect to its use by foreign adversaries.

On May 13, Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn., and Chrissy Houlahan, D-Penn., introduced companion legislation in the House.

Over the last year or more, states including Texas, Florida, New York, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Oregon, Utah, New Mexico and Idaho all have passed legislation restricting the use of AI in political ads or requiring that it be disclosed.

In this file photo former Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes is shown at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

FRANKFORT — Former Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes was cleared Monday by Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd of charges by the state Executive Branch Ethics Commission that she improperly ordered the downloading and distribution of voter registration data from her public office while she was Kentucky’s secretary of state.

“The court order is a complete vindication of Secretary Grimes,” said her attorney, Guthrie True of Frankfort.

Attorney Jon Salomon of Louisville, who also represented Grimes, said the order shows “there was no substantial violation of any ethics law and the counts against her were arbitrary. “She was just doing her job.”

Grimes, reached Monday night, said, “After years of investigation, the Franklin Circuit Court has finally put to rest baseless allegations of ethics violations.”

The commission said it is reviewing the order and would decide whether to appeal. It had said in November 2021 that Grimes must pay $10,000 in fines for two ethical violations pertaining to handling of voter data.

The commission had been investigating Grimes for several years. Grimes, a Democrat and Lexington attorney, was secretary of state from 2011 to 2019 and an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2014 against Republican Mitch McConnell. She is the daughter of former state Democratic Party Chair Jerry Lundergan.

As secretary of state, Grimes was the state’s chief elections officer. In her position, she had access to data from the state Voter Registration System in the State Board of Elections.

Shepherd, in his 33-page order released late Monday afternoon, agreed with Grimes’ arguments that the commission’s charges were barred by the five-year statute of limitations and that the record did not support a finding of any violations of the state executive branch’s code of ethics.

The commission had charged that Grimes violated the ethics code by sharing voter information without requiring an Open Records request or other “established process of government.”

Grimes submitted that all the voter data at issue was information in the public domain, that she had full legal authority and discretion as secretary of state to access and share such information. She claimed no statute or regulation was violated by the sharing of such public information.?

Shepherd faulted the Ethics Commission for not conducting an evidentiary hearing in the case to hear testimony from witnesses.

Because the commission acted against Grimes without a hearing, “the evidence in the record relied upon by Grimes is not disputed,” the judge’s order said.

He also said the complaint against Grimes was filed outside the applicable statute of limitations.?

He noted that the attorney general’s office and the Ethics Commission had been investigating for more than eight years allegations of misconduct by Grimes.

“After exhaustive investigation by both the attorney general and the Ethics Commission, there was no allegation concerning any substantive violation of any statute or regulation regarding the integrity of the voting roll,” the court order said.?

“There was no allegation of tampering with the voting rolls, no allegation of improper registration or voting, no allegation of any irregularity in any vote count or tabulation, no allegation of altering any identification of any voter, no allegation of any action that could impact the outcome of any election during Secretary Grimes’ tenure as chief state election officer.”

The order added that the attorney general’s office never brought any criminal charges against Grimes and that the matter was referred to the Ethics Commission.?

The only allegations pursued by the Ethics Commission were that Grimes allegedly acted unethically in accessing public information in the voter registration system by downloading voter information on to a thumb drive when she was a candidate for re-election.

The commission also looked at whether Grimes improperly shared information on new voter registrations for certain House districts in response to a request made informally through the office of the state House speaker without requiring a formal Open Records request or charging a fee.?

The judge noted that the commission’s final order did not dispute that Grimes would have lawful access to the voter data but that the crux of its complaint against Grimes was that she “downloaded the lists for a private purpose, without paying the mandatory fees or submitting sworn forms required by law.”

The court order said the commission failed to expressly allege what “private purpose” was served by placing voter data on a flash drive.

“What that ‘private purpose’ could have been is entirely unclear to the court,” the order said. “It further remains unclear what ‘established process of government’ was violated by Grimes’ act of downloading VRS data onto a flash drive.?

“This lack of detail relating to what ‘established government process’ was violated and how using a flash drive constitutes a violation of” cast doubt that the commission was proving its allegation by clear and convincing evidence, the order said.?

Christina Bobb, right, speaking with then Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, left, at a "Save America" rally in 2022 in Florence, Arizona. (Photo by Gage Skidmore / Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Less than a week after the Republican National Committee unveiled a “historic” new program to monitor the polls for fraud, a top lawyer with the committee was among those indicted for an alleged scheme to use false fraud claims to overturn the results of Arizona’s presidential election.

Indeed, the lawyer, RNC senior counsel for election integrity Christina Bobb, was scheduled to appear April 25 at an online meeting to recruit activists for the GOP’s vote-watching effort, though she didn’t show up. The meeting was organized by fringe conspiracy theorists who, like Bobb, have helped spread lies about illegal voting.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced the indictments on April 24 against 18 people, seven of whose names are redacted. Multiple news organizations have used details in the indictment to identify Bobb and the other six. Mayes on Friday confirmed Bobb’s indictment.

The confluence of events involving Bobb, the RNC and a loose network of anti-fraud activists underscores how the Trump-controlled GOP appears to be laying the groundwork to contest this year’s election using the same false claims about illegal voting — and even some of the same key figures — as it did in 2020.

Asked for comment on Bobb’s reported indictment and whether she remained employed by the RNC, an RNC spokesperson declined to answer on the record.

Bobb did not respond to an inquiry about her failure to appear at the April 25 event.

GOP’s ‘historic’ vote-monitoring program

The Arizona indictments came less than a week after the Trump campaign and the RNC announced a “historic, 100,000 person strong” effort to closely monitor the voting process, calling it, “the most extensive and monumental election integrity program in the nation’s history.”

“Whenever a ballot is being cast or counted, Republican poll watchers will be observing the process and reporting any irregularity,” the RNC declared in a press release.

The committee called the initiative “an historic collaboration between the RNC, the Trump Campaign, and passionate grassroots coalitions who are deeply invested in fighting voter fraud.” That appeared to be a reference to the party’s outreach to anti-fraud activists like those at Thursday’s meeting — many of whom have bought in to lies about the 2020 election.

Multiple lawsuits found no evidence of systematic or widespread fraud in 2020.

The RNC’s vote-monitoring effort has been championed by Lara Trump, former President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, who took over as RNC co-chair in late February. Bobb was announced as an election integrity lawyer at the RNC soon afterward.

Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president in 2024.

Lara Trump warned in an April 23 interview that the vote-monitoring program will include “people who can physically handle ballots” at polling places on Election Day. The rules for partisan poll watchers differ from state to state.

17 charged in fake electors plot

Bobb’s failure to attend Thursday’s online meeting, after organizers had promoted her appearance in advance, may have been because she has more urgent matters on her mind.

The indictments filed in Arizona allege a plot to use fake electors to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential vote.

The 11 people named in the indictment are the Arizona fake electors themselves, all Trump allies. The other seven people, whose names are redacted, have been identified by news outlets, including CNN and the New York Times, as Bobb, as well as Trump allies Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Mike Roman and Boris Epshteyn.

One of the seven, the indictment says, “was an attorney for the Trump Campaign” and “made false claims of widespread election fraud in Arizona and in six other states.” That person also “encouraged the Arizona Legislature to change the outcome of the election,” and “encouraged (Vice President Mike) Pence to accept the false Arizona Republican electors’ votes on January 6, 2021,” according to the indictment.

Bobb joined the Trump campaign as a lawyer in the aftermath of the 2020 vote, and was among the campaign officials, led by Giuliani, who organized a scheme to use false fraud claims as justification for submitting fake electors in seven states Trump lost, including Arizona, CNN has reported.

Bobb also tweeted on January 6, 2021: “@VP @Mike_Pence can solve this now by sending it back to the legislators.”

The indictment lists Trump — unnamed but described as “a former president of the United States who spread false claims of election fraud following the 2020 election” — as an unindicted co-conspirator.

The indictment alleges that as part of the scheme, the fake electors voted for Trump to receive Arizona’s electoral votes, “falsely claiming to be the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States from the State of Arizona.”

“Defendants deceived the citizens of Arizona by falsely claiming that those votes were contingent only on a legal challenge that would change the outcome of the election,” the indictment continues. “In reality, Defendants intended that their false votes for Trump-Pence would encourage Pence to reject the Biden-Harris votes on January 6, 2021, regardless of the outcome of the legal challenge.”

RNC courts conspiracy theorists, election deniers

The meeting at which Bobb was scheduled to appear Thursday was organized by two Florida activists with ties to leading election deniers, including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and included hundreds of grassroots anti-fraud activists from across the country.

It follows a similar April 4 event, at which the director of the RNC’s election integrity program, Christina Norton, told activists how to get involved with the party’s vote-monitoring program. States Newsroom attended both virtual meetings.

The April 25 meeting featured a parade of speakers, including the former Democratic consultant Naomi Wolf, making claims about illegal voting in 2020 and 2022, predicting that this year’s vote will be similarly rigged, and rallying supporters to take action.

“The current situation is that President Trump will once again win the presidential election just as he did in 2020,” said one speaker, Greg Stenstrom, a Pennsylvania-based conspiracy theorist who co-authored the book “The Parallel Election: A Blueprint for Deception,” which alleged massive fraud in that state’s 2020 vote.

“But it will be taken from him, and all of us, again, unless we restore fair and honest elections in the short time we have remaining before November. He cannot hold onto the presidency unless we act.”

In place of a live appearance by Bobb, Steve Stern, an organizer of the call, played an interview he’d conducted recently with her for his podcast.

In the interview, Stern asked Bobb what could be done about President Joe Biden’s plan to add “a million illegal aliens” to the voter rolls. (There is no evidence that Biden has such a plan, despite frequent similar claims by the far right.)

Bobb agreed there is a “concerted effort to empower the illegals to cast ballots,” adding: “It’s a very, very, serious issue this time around, and it’s something that we’re looking into … Is it something that law enforcement needs to handle, because there could potentially be a criminal component to it?”

“As far as illegals voting,” Bobb continued, “once they have registered, it’s very hard to undo that process. Because the registration is presumed valid.”

Studies have consistently shown that the amount of voting by non-citizens is minuscule. A 2017 Brennan Center analysis found that suspected — not proven — votes by non-citizens accounted for just 0.0001 percent of all votes cast in the 2016 election.

Other connections

In addition to these two meetings, there have been other recent instances of RNC staff courting right-wing activists who have spread election disinformation.

Bobb spoke last month with the far-right podcaster Breanna Morello. And she joined a recent conference call with several Trump-allied groups that have promoted lies about 2020, the Guardian reported.

Both the April 25 and April 4 meetings were organized by Stern and Raj Doraisamy, two far-right Florida activists and Lindell allies who have helped spread false claims about illegal voting.

Last month, Stern spoke with Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser, to promote the April 4 meeting. “We have so many illegal aliens in this country,” Stern said. “They want to vote. We gotta stop them.”

Doraisamy was reportedly outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and went on to found a group, Defend Florida, that went door to door to gather thousands of “affidavits” from Floridians in an effort to show that the state’s 2020 election was corrupted by massive fraud.

At a 2022 event organized by the group, Doraisamy thanked Lindell for his help with the door-to-door effort.

Also speaking at the April 25 meeting call was Joe Hoft, whose Gateway Pundit website, co-founded with Hoft’s brother Jim, has been a key vector for the spread of false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, the covid vaccine, and more.

Joe Hoft’s self-published book, “The Steal,”? is described this way on its Google Books page: “It’s early in the morning of November 4th, President Trump was way ahead in the swing states, but he warned of 4am ballot drops. He was right again. When Americans woke up later that morning, the election had been stolen.”

Another speaker at the meeting, Jay Valentine, used initial funding from Lindell to create voter data monitoring software.

According to documents obtained by the progressive group American Oversight, Valentine has worked closely with Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, a key figure in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, to convince lawmakers in Wisconsin and other states to use his “fractal programming technology” to uncover mass fraud.

“Voter fraud is a nationwide crime perpetrated locally, mostly by Democrats,” Valentine has written separately, promoting the idea of a national election fraud database. “We cannot fight industrial, sovereign, large-scale, election fraud with reports, press releases, and webinars.”

(McKenna Horsley)

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed a bill that received a late addition to outlaw ranked-choice voting in Kentucky.?

However, Beshear singled out another provision in House Bill 44 as the reason for the veto. That provision requires the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to annually furnish “lifetime Kentucky death records” to help the State Board of Elections clean up voter registration rolls.

In his veto message, Beshear said “lifetime death records is not a real term used or understood by the Department of Vital Statistics, so such records cannot be supplied. Instead, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services already provides the State Board of Elections with monthly death records. Therefore, House Bill 44 is not necessary, as the existing policy already provides more information than the legislation.”

The bill also requires the Administrative Office of the Courts to send a list of people who were excused from jury duty because they’re not U.S. citizens to the attorney general, the United States attorney of the appropriate jurisdiction and the State Board of Elections. The bill instructs the elections board to remove anyone on the list from the voter rolls within five days. Another provision prohibits the state from entering into any agreements that would require it to make efforts to register people to vote.

The bill’s primary sponsor Rep. John Hodgson, R-Fisherville, responded to the governor’s veto on social media by saying that the secretary of state’s office and the State Board of Elections had implemented a similar process as an experiment last year. Hodgson vowed that lawmakers would “gladly override this silly veto” when they return next week.

Ranked-choice voting allows voters to rank multiple candidates for an office based on their preference rather than selecting one candidate. The method has gained popularity across the country as a way to combat polarizing politics.?

Maine became the first state to adopt the method in 2016. Alaska uses a system that pairs ranked-choice voting with a “Final Five” system, where multiple candidates advance out of a primary election to the general election regardless of party affiliation.?

The Senate adopted a committee substitute of the House bill that would outlaw ranked-choice voting, and the House concurred.?

“Any existing or future ordinance enacted or adopted by a county, municipality, or any other local governmental entity which conflicts with this section shall be void,” the bill says.?

However, several lawmakers objected that it was too early for Kentucky to ban ranked-choice voting.

?Before she voted against concurring with the Senate changes last week, Rep. Rachel Roarx, D-Louisville, said the ranked-choice method allows voters to consider candidates “more closely” based on their preferences and the House should consider further debate before ruling it out.

“How many times has someone told you, ‘Well, I would like an independent candidate, but they won’t get enough votes to actually enter into winning based on how people are registered and where their preferences lie?’” she said. “Now, I’m not saying that it’s right or wrong or anything, I’m just saying that our constituents should have the ability to express those concerns to us, and that is the debate that we should have.”

In the Senate the day before, Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Fruit Hill, voted in favor of the measure, but said he objected to the ranked-choice voting provision and argued it “is not something that’s been used in enough jurisdictions yet to identify whether or not it might actually be better.” This is his last session in the Senate, as he is not seeking reelection, but he said he had been working on a bill to pilot ranked-choice voting in Kentucky and did not file it.?

“I think prohibiting it before we have a chance to see how those pilots in different places around the country works is premature,” Westerfield said. “It’s my hope that if it turns out that tends to be a good way to elect people, the state of Kentucky would consider that down the road and it would undo and repeal this particular part of the bill.”

However, not everyone is open to the idea of ranked-choice voting in Kentucky. Sen. Phillip Wheeler, R-Pikeville, said before voting in favor of the bill he was “glad we’re banning” the process.

“Election Day is there for a reason and winners are chosen on Election Day. You vote for the candidate and the candidate with the most votes should win. We shouldn’t be picking a second, third or fourth option. That is the process and that’s the way the process has always been done. that’s the way the process needs to stay.”

Republicans have an overwhelming supermajority in Kentucky’s General Assembly, meaning they can easily override Beshear’s veto.?

House Republican Floor Leader Steven Rudy speaks to reporters after winning committee approval for a bill that would change the process for filling vacant U.S. Senate seats. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

FRANKFORT — The day after Mitch McConnell announced he is stepping down as the U.S. Senate’s Republican leader, Republican lawmakers in his home state were working to trim the Kentucky governor’s role in filling future U.S. Senate vacancies.

A state House committee on Thursday approved a bill that would require the governor to call a special election to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat and allow the winner to serve until the end of the unexpired term.

The governor now appoints a successor who serves until voters next go to the polls.

The sponsor of House Bill 622, Kentucky House Republican Floor Leader Steven Rudy, of Paducah, told reporters he had been interested in the process long before McConnell’s Wednesday announcement and had filed similar legislation in 2021.?

“I had no idea that the senator was going to make his announcement yesterday,” Rudy told reporters. “I tell people all the time: nobody’s guaranteed tomorrow. Not either Sen. Paul, not Sen. McConnell, not myself or anybody here.”?

With McConnell’s blessing in 2021, Kentucky’s Republican-controlled General Assembly required sitting governors to choose Senate appointees from the same political party as the person vacating the seat. That law requires the governor to appoint one of three recommendations from the appropriate party’s executive committee.

Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, sponsored the legislation. Rudy said he filed a version of his current bill then but it did not pass.?

Hours later, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear told reporters that past Kentucky governors have had the power to fill U.S. Senate vacancies and said the bill is an example of partisan politics.

Rudy told the House Elections, Constitutional Amendments and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee that the current law conflicts with the spirit of the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which established voters should choose U.S. senators.?

Rudy cited former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich’s? federal criminal conviction for putting an Illinois Senate seat “up for sale” after Barack Obama vacated it in 2008 to become president. Rudy said the corruption “really turned my stomach.”?

Committee members forwarded the bill with 13 yes votes, one no vote and a pass. All Republicans on the committee gave approval along with Rep. Josie Raymond, D-Louisville. Rep. Adrielle Camuel, D-Lexington, voted no.?

Rep. Keturah Herron, D-Louisville, passed and added that she wanted to get further clarity on questions she had before supporting or opposing the bill.?

Rep. Josh Calloway, R-Irvington, raised the issue of what should happen under the current law if a governor did not follow the law when selecting a Senate replacement.?

Last year, Republican gubernatorial candidate and former Attorney General Daniel Cameron pressed Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear on not publicly committing to picking a Republican to fill a Senate vacancy. Cameron is a McConnell protegé.?

In light of McConnell’s announcement, Beshear told the Kentucky Lantern: “There is no indication that he will not fulfill his promise to serve his entire term.”

McConnell, who recently turned 82, said on Wednesday that he looks forward to continuing to represent Kentucky in the Senate. He would be up for reelection in 2026.

In a Thursday press conference, Beshear reiterated that he is “completely and totally ruling out” a run for an open Senate seat in 2026. His second gubernatorial term ends in December 2027.?

He also said governors of both parties before 2021 had the same “type of authority that they’re trying to tear away from me in my time as governor.”

“?If we are just dominated by trying to create a result of what letter someone would have behind their name if appointed, then we are not performing or engaging in good government,” the governor said.?

Rudy disagreed, saying the U.S. Constitution gives the legislative branch the power to decide how to temporarily fill vacancies in federal offices.

“We’re not taking power from the governor and giving it to the legislature,” Rudy said. “If anything we’re giving it to the people.”?

McConnell has held his U.S. Senate seat since 1984.

Fearing that Democrats hold a crucial edge in ballots cast before Election Day, national Republicans are working to convince their voters to take advantage of mail and early voting this year.?(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Fearing that Democrats hold a crucial edge in ballots cast before Election Day, national Republicans are working to convince their voters to take advantage of mail and early voting this year.

“We can’t play catch up. We can’t start from behind. We can’t let Dems get a big head start and think we’re going to win it all on Election Day,” Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel said in November on a conference call aimed at promoting the group’s Bank Your Vote initiative to encourage early and mail voting. “Things happen on Election Day.”

But the party’s army of lawyers is, more quietly, sending a very different message. The RNC is fighting in courtrooms and legal filings in key election battlegrounds across the country to make it harder to cast a mail ballot and to have it counted.

On Feb. 20, attorneys for the RNC were in a federal courtroom in Philadelphia, in a bid to require that Pennsylvania throw out mail ballots with missing or incorrect dates.

Eleven days earlier, they filed a lawsuit challenging several provisions of Arizona’s newly adopted election rules, including a rule allowing voters who have not shown proof of citizenship to cast a mail ballot.

And that same day, they asked a court in Georgia to uphold a state law that imposes stricter rules on mail voting.

Separately, in recent months the RNC has asked courts to let it join the defense of laws in Ohio, Wisconsin, and North Carolina that similarly impose tighter rules on mail voting (judges in the latter two states denied the requests, while the Ohio motion was approved).

The party also has sued to block a New York law that lets people vote by mail without an excuse (the state’s Supreme Court this month dismissed the complaint). And it has formally weighed in against proposed changes to Nevada’s election rules, including one that makes it easier for election officials to prevent volunteer observers from disrupting the counting of mail ballots.

In January, the RNC went further than ever, filing a lawsuit in Mississippi that it has said aims to obtain a nationwide ban on mail ballots that arrive after Election Day. RNC lawyers stated plainly in their complaint that Republicans’ interests are at stake because mail voting tends to favor Democrats.

States with close races targeted

Though it’s received relatively little attention, the RNC’s legal onslaught could have a major impact on the 2024 elections.

Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Nevada are all set to be among the closest states in this year’s presidential race, while Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada host pivotal U.S. Senate contests. New York, meanwhile, is home to several swing congressional districts that could determine control of the U.S. House.

And the legal effort against mail voting has been matched by a legislative one. Thirteen states, including Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, and Ohio, have passed 16 bills to restrict mail voting since the start of 2023, according to a database run by the Voting Rights Lab.

It all amounts to a multi-pronged effort to suppress voting by mail, voting advocates say — one that could threaten access to the ballot this fall, especially for Democrats, who are now more likely than Republicans to use mail voting. At its core are legal arguments aimed at convincing judges to interpret the law in ways that are explicitly adverse to voters.

The push sits uneasily alongside an RNC campaign to convince GOP voters to embrace mail and early voting. But it’s right in keeping with former President Donald Trump’s years-long, evidence-free campaign against voting by mail.

“In courtrooms and state legislatures across the country, Republicans are doing everything in their power to restrict mail-in voting,” said Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic election lawyer, in a statement. “The RNC’s legal strategy is clear. The Republican Party no longer seeks to earn the support of a majority of the American electorate. Instead, they are launching a legal assault on our democracy.”

A spokesman for the RNC did not respond to a request for comment.

A muddled message on mail voting

In 2020, many states loosened rules on mail voting in response to COVID-19. That year’s election saw record high turnout despite the pandemic, with nearly half of all voters casting a mail ballot — a huge increase from around 22% in 2016.

Even with COVID-19 tamed, many states have kept their more liberal mail voting rules in place, or, like New York, have passed new laws expanding access to mail ballots.

While leading Democrats have embraced mail voting, Trump has repeatedly denounced it, falsely claiming it opens the door to massive fraud.

“MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES,” Trump tweeted in June 2020, adding that the result would be a “RIGGED” election.

It’s true that several of the extremely rare instances of proven voter fraud have involved mail voting. But there’s no evidence of systematic mail voter fraud of the kind that Trump has claimed threatens the integrity of a presidential election.

A voter fraud database run by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, lists 279 cases of “fraudulent use of absentee ballots,” going back to 1988 — since which time hundreds of millions of mail ballots have been cast.

Meanwhile, GOP lawyers have gone to the mat to try to put the mail voting genie back in the bottle.

“We’ve watched Democrats systematically try to codify those post-COVID changes that they made, and we’ve been in the courts trying to keep those pre-COVID protections in place for our elections,” RNC chair Ronna McDaniel explained in October. “There’s been a battle waged.”

It’s not surprising, then, that Democrats have in recent elections used mail voting at significantly higher rates than Republicans. So pronounced is the split that in 2020, President Joe Biden won the mail vote in 14 out of 15 states analyzed by 538.com, while Trump likewise won the Election Day vote in 14 out of 15.

That’s led the GOP to fret that it now often goes into Election Day already trailing by a significant margin. In response, the RNC last year launched the Bank Your Vote initiative to encourage Republicans to vote early or by mail.

The effort includes websites in all 50 states, and even an ad recorded by Trump — albeit without much visible enthusiasm.

“Sign up and commit to voting early,” Trump says. “We must defeat the far left at their own game.”

But Trump has continued to muddy that message.

“You know, we have these elections that last for 62 days,” Trump declared last month in his victory speech after the Iowa caucuses. “And if you need some more time, take as much time as you want. And so many bad things happen. We have to get rid of mail-in ballots because once you have mail-in ballots, you have crooked elections.”

RNC court filings

The RNC’s legal assault on mail voting suggests a similar view. In several court filings, RNC lawyers have suggested that tight safeguards are needed to ensure mail voting doesn’t allow for fraudulent votes.

Ohio’s law that restricts who can return a mail ballot on behalf of a voter should be upheld, the RNC argued in one typical filing, because it guards against “an increased risk of voter fraud and other irregularities.”

The Republican bid to restrict mail voting is part of a larger effort by the party since 2020 to devote more resources to “election integrity” — tighter election rules that prioritize anti-fraud measures over access. It includes a year-round election integrity legal department, which has said it worked with over 90 law firms and participated in nearly 100 lawsuits during the 2022 cycle.

So far this cycle, the RNC has paid over $4 million to two top Republican law firms, Consovoy McCarthy and Wiley Rein, according to FEC records. Thomas McCarthy, a co-founder of Consovoy McCarthy, is listed on RNC motions in the Mississippi, Georgia and Wisconsin cases, among others.

The focus on “election integrity” comes as McDaniel, the RNC chair, is reported to be stepping down at the end of the month. Trump’s choice to replace her, North Carolina GOP chair Michael Whatley, has stressed the importance of tight voting rules for Republican success, States Newsroom has reported.

Chipping away at mail votes

The most far-reaching of the RNC’s cases is the lawsuit it filed with other Republicans in January against a Mississippi law that allows mail ballots that arrive up to five days after an election to be counted, as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day.

Federal law sets Election Day as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, the suit argues, so by extending the election past that day, Mississippi is violating federal law.

The RNC has said the goal is to obtain a ruling from a judge that bars post-Election-Day ballots from being counted not just in Mississippi but nationwide. The 5th Circuit, which contains Mississippi, is known as perhaps the most conservative judicial circuit in the country.

Election law experts have said it’s unlikely, but not impossible, that a court could accept the RNC’s argument.

If the case were to reach the Supreme Court, at least one justice appears friendly. In 2020, when the court upheld Wisconsin’s ban on late-arriving ballots, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that states have the right to set election deadlines “to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue when thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election.”

Mississippi is one of 18 states — including key battlegrounds like Ohio, Nevada, Virginia, Texas, and New York — plus the District of Columbia, that count ballots that arrive after Election Day. (North Carolina last year passed a law that restricts mail voting in several ways, including by banning ballots that arrive after Election Day. It’s that law that the RNC sought unsuccessfully to help defend from a court challenge by Democrats, which is ongoing.)

The number of votes at issue could be significant. In 2020, the U.S. Postal Service said it processed nearly 190,000 ballots in the two days after the election. Most of those, it said, were in states that allow late-arriving ballots.

The Mississippi lawsuit makes clear that, despite the Bank Your Vote campaign, Republicans want to curtail mail voting because they think it gives Democrats an edge.

“Because voting by mail is starkly polarized by party, [allowing late-arriving ballots] directly harms Plaintiffs,” the RNC’s lawyers wrote in the complaint. “For example, according to the MIT Election Lab, 46% of Democratic voters in the 2022 General Election mailed in their ballots, compared to only 27% of Republicans. That means the late-arriving mail-in ballots that are counted for five additional days disproportionately break for Democrats.”

Pennsylvania case also crucial

The Pennsylvania case is another that could reverberate. In November 2022, the state Supreme Court ruled — in response to a suit filed by the RNC and other Republicans — that over 10,000 mail ballots on which the voter had neglected to write the date on the outer envelope, or had written an incorrect date, must be rejected.

The state’s NAACP chapter filed its own suit in federal court in response. The RNC quickly intervened, arguing that the state Supreme Court’s ruling should be upheld. A district court ruled for the NAACP in November, finding that the Civil Rights Act bars states from rejecting votes based on immaterial paperwork errors. The RNC appealed, arguing for a narrower interpretation of the landmark civil rights law, setting up the Feb. 20 hearing.

In a sign that the case could have an impact beyond Pennsylvania, 17 Republican-led states last month submitted an amicus brief in support of the RNC’s position.

The other cases may not have the same reach as those two. But together, they broadly aim to tighten the rules around mail voting to a degree that could significantly chip away at mail votes.

RNC lawyers have marshaled a range of arguments in these cases.

They have claimed, unsuccessfully, that New York’s law expanding access to mail voting violates the state’s constitution, which bans no-excuse mail voting. They’ve said Georgia’s new deadline to apply for a mail ballot of seven days before Election Day doesn’t violate the federal law barring deadlines of fewer than 11 days, because the federal government lacks the authority to regulate these deadlines.

No mail voting rule appears too small to escape the notice of RNC lawyers. This month’s lawsuit against Arizona targets a new rule that lets voters who registered without proof of citizenship — and therefore, under Arizona law, can vote in federal elections only — receive a mail ballot, arguing that state law bars these voters from voting by mail.

And they’ve submitted comments to a Nevada commission, criticizing a proposed rule there that gives election officials more power to ensure the counting process for mail ballots isn’t disrupted. The new powers could let election officials infringe on the public’s right to witness the counting, the group’s lawyers assert.

Meanwhile, supporters of mail voting say Republican fears about an influx of Democratic mail votes may be misplaced.

“Americans have used mail ballots for over a hundred years because they provide a safe and convenient way to ensure the right to vote,” said Barbara Smith Warner, the executive director of the National Vote at Home Institute, which advocates for mail voting. “Research has demonstrated time and time again that voting at home increases voter participation and turnout for all, with no partisan advantage for any side.”

“Attacks on mail ballots are red herrings to distract from their true intent — making it harder for citizens to vote, and sowing distrust in our elections,” Smith Warner said.

Election Day, Nov. 7, 2023. Kentucky is one of many states looking to protect future elections from being swayed by deep fakes and the deceptive use of artificial intelligence. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Matthew Mueller)

FRANKFORT — A Senate committee forwarded a bipartisan bill Wednesday aimed at limiting use of “deep fakes” or deceptive artificial intelligence to influence elections in Kentucky.?

Two Lexington lawmakers, Republican Sen. Amanda Mays Bledsoe and Democratic Sen. Reggie Thomas, told the Senate State and Local Government Committee Senate Bill 131 is a first step in tackling the use of AI to influence elections.?

In recent years, wider use of AI has led to viral “deep fakes,” or manipulated digital media, to spread misinformation. Recently, robocalls mimicking President Joe Biden urged voters to not participate in the New Hampshire primary last month.

“This technology is changing at a rapid pace,” Bledose said. “Those in the industry recognize this is a first step and some legislation that will likely change or bemodified to adapt to the ever changing environment in the future, but it’s a crucial first step in ensuring that we check the integrity of the election process.”

Thomas, who is the Democratic caucus chair, agreed and warned the use of AI could spread disinformation among voters. He said the General Assembly should act now to “get a handle” on the potential threat.

“Really, this needs to be done at the federal level,” he said. “Congress needs to act, but Congress hasn’t done so thus far, so we see states acting in this space.”?

The committee substitute approved Wednesday would allow political candidates appearing in manipulated digital media to bring legal action against the sponsor of the media.?

It also defines “synthetic media” as “an image, audio recording, or video recording of an identifiable natural individual’s appearance, action, or speech that has been intentionally manipulated with the use of generative adversarial network techniques or other digital technology in a manner to create a realistic but false image, audio, or video that produces” an image that could be seem real or different meaning of an original, unaltered image.?

The bill received 10 favorable votes. The lone nay was Sen. Gex Williams, R-Verona, who raised concerns over the bill’s definition of “synthetic media” and said the bill, as it is now, is a “band-aid,” particularly when it comes to independent expenditure committees.?

“It solves some of the problem but it doesn’t solve all of the problems. It will absolutely positively not keep any of us at any time from being subject to deep fakes in our campaigns,” he said.??

Senate Republican Floor Leader Damon Thayer, of Georgetown, called the bill “thoughtful” and noted independent expenditure committees are regulated at the federal level.?

“I understand Sen. Williams’ concerns relating to independent expenditure committees but we can’t regulate them here,” Thayer said. “We can only make law under Kentucky Revised Statutes, under the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance.”?

With a presidential election looming in November, a few other states are looking to regulate AI or have passed laws on the issue. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures,? 25 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., have introduced bills and 18 states and Puerto Rico have either adopted resolutions or enacted legislation.?

Sen. Chris McDaniel (LRC Public Information)

FRANKFORT —?A bill that would limit Kentucky governors’ power to issue pardons or commute sentences was approved by the Senate State and Local Government Committee Wednesday.?

Senate Bill 126 proposes a constitutional amendment to suspend the governor’s power to issue pardons or sentence commutations from 30 days before a gubernatorial election until the fifth Tuesday after the election, the day of the gubernatorial inauguration. Ultimately Kentucky voters would have to decide whether to enact the measure.?

Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, filed the bill after reading a recent Cincinnati Enquirer story about a man convicted of abduction, rape, robbery and murder who was eligible for a parole hearing because former Gov. Matt Bevin had commuted his sentence after losing his reelection bid in 2019. The Kentucky Parole Board later decided the man must serve the remainder of his sentence.?

“I think that it is imperative to the foundational issues of justice in the commonwealth that one individual not be able to short circuit the entirety of a justice system — from the frontline police officer who makes an arrest, to the Supreme Court of the land, who can sentence the condemned to death —?is the final adjudicator,” McDaniel said Wednesday. “That power should not rest in one person who will never again stand accountable in front of the voters.”?

The senator previously said the bill is aimed at increasing accountability for governors facing election.?

In 2019, after losing the election to now Gov. Andy Beshear, Bevin, a Republican, issued a flurry of pardons to people convicted of crimes including rape, murder and child abuse.

Sen. Denise Harper Angel, D-Louisville, joined seven Republicans in voting for the bill.?

Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstrong passed on voting in the committee. She explained that she thought what Bevin did “was abhorrent” but wanted more time to speak with stakeholders about the practical implications of the bill.?

Kentuckians could no longer use one form of photo ID at the polls without also filing an affidavit under a bill that the Senate approved Tuesday. It now goes to the House. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

FRANKFORT — Kentuckians could no longer use university-issued identification cards as their primary voter ID under a bill that cleared the Republican-controlled Senate Tuesday along party lines.?

Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams decried the legislation, Senate Bill 80, in a Tuesday interview with the Kentucky Lantern ahead of the Senate vote.

Looking to the upcoming presidential election, Adams said it is important to “have a law that actually is enforceable” and not struck down in court. He said photo ID laws in other states have been upheld if they permit university-issued IDs for proving a voter’s identity.?

“To me, this is a lot of theater and you got a sponsor, obviously, who wants to get attention for making a scene versus actually legislating like an adult and passing laws that will be upheld by courts,” Adams said. “That’s my goal.”?

Kentucky’s current photo ID law, which was passed in 2020, has faced some legal challenges, but Adams said the law has been defensible as it is. No lawmakers objected to including university-issued IDs in the law at the time it was adopted, he added.

All members of Senate GOP leadership voted in favor of Sen. Adrienne Southworth’s SB 80 Tuesday. When explaining his vote, Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, of Georgetown, said he has voted for and supported Adams in elections but that “doesn’t mean he’s right all the time.”?

“At the end of the day, as a member of the executive branch … whoever is in that office is charged with implementing the policy of the General Assembly,” Thayer said.?

The seven Senate Democrats voted against the legislation and 27 Republicans supported it.?

If passed, the bill would prohibit identification cards issued by universities and colleges to students and employees from being accepted as primary proof of identification at the polls.?

Southworth, R-Lawrenceburg, said the legislation is not about “getting rid of ways for people to authenticate their identity,” but “identifying where we place weight on which IDs people are bringing” to vote. She previously argued such IDs are issued with less personal information than government-issued IDs used for primary voter identification, such as driver’s licenses. Her bill would permit voters to use a college ID at the polls, but they also would have to complete an affidavit saying they meet voting requirements.

Adams had previously warned Republicans against “gratuitously” alienating young voters by taking away their ability to use college photo IDs after the Senate State and Local Government Committee gave approval to the bill. Democrats frequently cited Adams’ opposition to the bill in their floor speeches Tuesday.??

While he is against Southworth’s bill, Adams said he supports House Bill 374, a similar measure in the House that would remove only debit or credit cards as a secondary ID form. Southworth’s bill would also remove credit or debit cards from being used as a secondary form to prove voter identity.

Referring to Southworth’s earlier testimony against the 2020 law, Adams said “it’s not accidental” that she is now sponsoring a bill that could potentially throw out the law. He previously shared Southworth’s past testimony online after the recent committee meeting.?

“This is someone who has been hostile to photo ID to vote her whole career,” Adams said. “It’s not an accident that now she’s trying to pass a law that would weaken our law and get it potentially struck down.”?

Southworth previously told reporters she did not have access to election fraud investigations when asked if she was aware of anyone fraudulently using a college ID to vote in Kentucky. Adams — who is the state’s top election official —?said there is “no evidence of any fraud being committed with fake college IDs” in the commonwealth.

When asked by a reporter to respond to Adams saying there is no evidence of voter fraud with college IDs, Southworth said Tuesday “that’s really not the focus of the bill anyway” and lawmakers are being proactive.?

“It’s an honor system,” she said of the current system. “As long as you don’t do anything totally out of line, nobody’s going to blink.”

Southworth has openly denied election outcomes and pushed disinformation regarding election security. In past years, she joined future secretary of state candidate Steve Knipper, defeated by Adams, on a “Restore Election Integrity” tour and cited disproven claims. Adams and Southworth have long been at odds over election laws.?

Southworth has filed several bills aimed at changing elections laws this session, including a proposal to require voting systems to contain only parts manufactured in the U.S. and another to require a “risk-limiting audit” be conducted after polls close to certify an election.

Southworth also recently filed a resolution that would urge the U.S. Congress to repeal the REAL ID Act passed in 2005 that requires multiple forms of identification for a REAL ID driver’s license. The resolution argues there is a security risk because a national database has been created with personal information about those ID holders.?

When asked what he thought of Senate leadership moving Southworth’s bill forward, Adams said he still has respect for the Senate because of its previous support for the photo ID law and senators have the right to amend laws they pass.?

“My hope is the state as a whole won’t turn from a respected official who just got elected by a landslide again and instead turn to a crackpot who’s said some really outrageous, destructive things; has harassed our county clerks for years; harassed me and my staff for years,” Adams said. “I hope that she’s not the voice of reason on election issues in Kentucky.”?

Adams recently won a second term and was the state’s top vote-getter in November.?

Rep. Michael Meredith, R-Oakland, wants voters to preclude Kentucky cities from allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections. (LRC Public Information)

FRANKFORT — A Republican-backed bill passed Tuesday by the Kentucky House of Representatives would ask voters to approve a constitutional amendment barring people who aren’t U.S. citizens from voting in state and local elections, something that Kentucky’s chief elections official says doesn’t happen.?

House Bill 341 sponsor, Rep. Michael Meredith, R-Oakland, described the bill as “simple” legislation that would close a “potential loophole.”

The bill passed 81-15 on a largely part line vote.

“Voting rights in this state specifically and really in this nation should be reserved for citizens,” Meredith said. “That doesn’t say that anybody can’t go through the path to citizenship and gain those rights over time, and I’m certainly a proponent of that. However, I think most people believe that our elections should be controlled by citizens of this nation and not others.”?

HB 341 now heads to the state Senate for its consideration. If passed into law, a ballot question asking voters to amend the state Constitution to “prohibit persons who are not citizens of the United States from being allowed to vote” in the state would be placed on this year’s general election ballot.?

Already, residents who are not citizens, such as those with work visas, are barred from voting in federal and state elections, though at least 12 states allow noncitizens to vote in municipal elections, special district elections or both. Several states including Alabama, Colorado, Florida and Ohio in recent years have passed ballot initiatives prohibiting noncitizens from voting in local and state elections.?

Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, a Republican, told the Lantern he wasn’t aware of any jurisdiction in Kentucky that allows noncitizens to vote in local elections.?

Several Democrats voiced their opposition to the bill, stating that such legislation wasn’t necessary, marginalized immigrants and prioritized a non-issue over other concerns.?

“It’s essential we prioritize legislation that addresses the current pressing concerns we have today, rather than focusing on issues that do not pose a current significant threat,” said Rep. Chad Aull, D-Lexington. “We have no need for legislation such as this bill.”?

Aull said the Republican-dominated House needed to instead focus on other “impactful” measures, pointing to Democrat-backed bills to extend votings hours and remove straight-ticket voting as a ballot option to “contribute to a more informed and thoughtful voting process.”

Rep. Nima Kulkarni, D-Louisville, said she believed the bill could make some families, specifically noncitizen parents with children who are U.S. citizens, feel unwelcome in Kentucky or the United States.?

One Republican co-sponsor of the bill referenced his parents’ journey to becoming U.S. citizens in the 1980s as a part of his “very personal” reason for supporting the legislation. Rep. Killian Timoney, R-Nicholasville, said his parents surrendered their Irish citizenship so that they could participate in local school board elections and be more involved in their community.

“We’ve done so much to make sure our elections are true and pure,” Timoney said. “This is the next step there.”

Adams, the Republican secretary of state, said he doesn’t have a problem with HB 341 but that his office is neutral on the bill. He said he believes current law already bars noncitizens from? voting.?

“I don’t favor noncitizens voting in any election in Kentucky,” Adams said. “I think the goal behind this bill is to ensure that some aggressive or adventurous city doesn’t pass an ordinance that contradicts” the Constitution.

Lawsuits have been litigated in various states over allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections. The Vermont Supreme Court ruled in favor of the practice last year, and a New York judge in 2022 struck down a law that would have allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections in New York City.?

Adams said given that only four constitutional amendments can be placed on each general election ballot, he wonders what competition to get on the ballot will be like among other proposed constitutional amendments being considered by the legislature. That includes an amendment that would curb a governor’s commutation and pardon powers and an amendment that would allow public funding for non-public chools.?

House Speaker David Osborne told reporters Tuesday it’s hard to say what proposed constitutional amendments would make it onto the general election ballot and that conversations would be had with the Senate before amendments are passed by the legislature.

McKenna Horsley contributed to this story.?

Sen. Adrienne Southworth, R-Lawrenceburg, speaks to reporters after her bill to remove university-issued IDs from accepted primary voter identification forms is heard in a committee. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

FRANKFORT — A bill that would block Kentuckians from using university-issued IDs to vote has passed out of a Senate committee, prompting the Republican secretary of state to warn members of his party to “be careful not to gratuitously alienate young voters.”?

Identification cards issued by universities and colleges to students and employees would no longer be accepted as proof of identification at the polls under Senate Bill 80. The Senate State and Local Government Committee gave the bill favorable passage Wednesday in a vote of 9-2.?

The bill’s primary sponsor, Sen. Adrienne Southworth, R-Lawrenceburg, told the committee such IDs are issued with less personal information than government-issued IDs used for primary voter identification, such as driver’s licenses. She said university IDs are “not enough to compare, for any purposes really.”

“People that have these government issued documents have had to do things like swear an oath, they have ethics codes or they’re employees — a lot of kind of surrounding stuff that goes around where we assume these people may be telling us the truth so we’re going to accept it on its face,” Southworth said.?

When asked by reporters if there has been a specific issue with college IDs in Kentucky used in voter fraud cases, the senator said she did not have access to elections investigations.

Southworth’s bill also removes credit and debit cards from a list of accepted forms of identification if a voter lacks a driver’s license or other government-issued ID.?

The General Assembly approved Kentucky’s current voter ID law, requiring voters to present photo IDs, during the 2020 legislative session. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear issued a futile veto of the legislation. That bill had the support of Secretary of State Michael Adams, who often hails the motto: “Make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

However, a spokesperson for Adams warned Republicans in a statement after Wednesday’s meeting that they should be wary of removing university-issued IDs from law.?

“Our Photo ID to Vote law was carefully drafted to ensure success against court challenges, and Secretary Adams was successful in three such challenges,” said Michon Lindstrom, Adams’ director of communications. “We are concerned that this bill could get the Photo ID law struck down. Also, as a Republican, Secretary Adams believes his party should be careful not to gratuitously alienate young voters like college students by taking away their ability to use college Photo IDs in the absence of any evidence they have been used fraudulently.”

When asked what conversations she’s had with Kentucky elections officials, Southworth told the committee that the legislative branch makes the laws, and as for the executive branch, “it’s not their job to tell us how we need to do our job.”?

Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, expressed ardent support for Southworth’s bill, saying she is “trying to improve” the 2020 law. Thayer added that law also allows those without a photo ID to receive one for free at a local county clerk’s office.

“??I’ve always thought that these other forms of ID shouldn’t be acceptable at the polls. I think it’s a good bill, very straightforward,” he said.

Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstrong, of Louisville, was one of the two Democrats on the committee to vote against the bill and called it a “solution in search of a problem.”?

“I haven’t heard any evidence that these forms of ID are more likely to be subject to fraud,” she said. “I worry that by taking away a source of identification most often used by some of our more vulnerable residents — who don’t have access to some of these government-issued IDs that require folks to gather documents, they can be expensive, both in terms of time and money — that we’re actually making it more difficult for folks to vote.”?

Southworth has filed several bills aimed at changing elections laws this session, including a proposal to require voting systems to only contain parts manufactured in the U.S. and another to require a “risk-limiting audit” be conducted after polls close to certify an election.

Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, speaks with reporters after the Senate passed his bill for a constitutional amendment to move Kentucky's statewide elections to presidential election years. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

FRANKFORT — The Senate passed legislation Wednesday that moves the state a step closer to holding its elections during presidential election years.

Senate Bill 10 proposes a constitutional amendment allowing Kentucky elections for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and other constitutional officers, in even-numbered years. Senators voted 26-9, with Republican Sens. Adrienne Southworth, of Lawrenceburg, and John Schickel, of Union, voting with Democrats against the measure.?

The bill’s primary sponsor, Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, has attempted to get the bill passed previously, first filing it in 2013. He? used his notes from 2014 on the Senate floor Wednesday.?

“Certainly, I had the ability to juggle a lot of things at one time, to include making sure that I had cast my ballot, and so I fail to see why a lot of my friends on the other side of the aisle have such a lack of faith in the ability of the voters of the Commonwealth to juggle multiple issues at the same time,” McDaniel said on the Senate floor Wednesday, referring to casting ballots while he was in the U.S. Army.?

The Senate passed McDaniel’s legislation in 2020 but it did not make it out of the House. McDaniel said he feels there is momentum for the bill in the House this session.?

While some Democrats argued that the bill was politically motivated after Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear won reelection in November, McDaniel has refuted that because of his long history of supporting the bill. Nevertheless, if recent politics do change how House members feel about the amendment, McDaniel said he welcomes the support.?

“I’ll take support for whatever reason people want to support it,” McDaniel said after the Senate adjourned.?

McDaniel said he wants to increase voter participation and limit voter fatigue from frequent election ads almost every year.?

Presidential elections typically have higher voter turnout than elections in odd-numbered years. For instance, the voter turnout in Kentucky’s recent November statewide general election was 38.1%. Kentucky’s turnout for the 2020 presidential general election was 60.3%

McDaniel also argues moving the elections would save money. A previous Senate GOP press release said the Legislative Research Commission found that moving Kentucky statewide races to even years “would save local governments approximately $13.5 million during the calendar year when a primary and general election would no longer occur.”

Southworth said on the Senate floor that if lawmakers wanted to address reducing the cost of elections, they should consider other methods before “reducing the focus on our state government.”?

“The theme word right now has been ‘voter fatigue,’ and I really take a big issue with this because I think, first of all, it’s not interrupting American citizens’ lives to have to go vote. This is, after all, a country created of, by and for the people,” she said.?

A few Democrats also spoke against the bill. Sen. Robin Webb, of Grayson, said many who were not “a landowning white male” did not have the right to vote until recently and argued against limiting “the opportunity to vote in any capacity.”?

Webb also called for “meaningful campaign finance reform,” if lawmakers were concerned about a barrage of political ads.?

However, McDaniel’s bill has the support of Senate Republican leadership, including Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, of Georgetown, who was a co-sponsor, and Senate President Robert Stivers, of Manchester.?

“People don’t like voting three out of every four years,” Thayer said in a floor speech. “Kentucky’s one of only five states that elects its constitutional officers in an odd-number year.”?

Other states with major off-year elections are Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia.

The bill affects the offices of agriculture commissioner, secretary of state, treasurer and auditor. Winners of the 2027 election would serve a five-year term before the transition to even-numbered year elections.?

Kentucky does elect legislators, judges and most local officials in even numbered years.

Rep. Keturah Herron. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Sarah Ladd).

State Rep. Keturah Herron, a Louisville Democrat, filed Tuesday to run for election to the Kentucky Senate in 2024.?

Herron will seek the seat of Sen. Denise Harper Angel, another Louisville Democrat who recently announced she will not seek reelection in 2024 after representing Senate District 35 since 2005.?

Herron said in a statement about her campaign that she is running for Senate because “our communities have big, urgent challenges that Frankfort needs to address.” The general election is November 2024.?

“I’ve spent my career as an effective, results-driven advocate. I worked to pass Breonna’s Law in both Louisville and Frankfort, and have spent more than a decade working with vulnerable youth in our Commonwealth,” Herron said. “I want to take that experience to the senate to push for real solutions to gun violence, full restoration of voting rights for people who have served their time, and investments in public education – including pay raises for teachers and universal pre-K – that our state badly needs. I also want to thank Senator Harper Angel for almost two decades of remarkable public service representing this district, and in particular her passionate support for victims of crime.”

Breonna’s Law is named after Breonna Taylor, a young Black woman from Louisville who died in a police raid in 2020. The Louisville Metro Council adopted an ordinance that bans no-knock search warrants. The General Assembly passed the law in 2021.?

Herron is also a youth and justice advocate and formerly a policy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky. Herron became the first openly LGBTQ+ person to win election to the state House.

Harper Angel previously said she plans to focus “on my personal life and creating cherished memories with my family” after her term ends.

As of Tuesday afternoon, no other candidates had filed for the seat.

A voter approaches the Morton Middle School polling site in Lexington, Nov. 7, 2023. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Matthew Mueller)

FRANKFORT — Kentucky’s candidate filing deadline is next month.?

So far, many have already signed papers seeking the Kentucky General Assembly and U.S. Congress. To appear on the primary election ballot, candidates must register by Jan. 5, 2024.?

Next year, Kentucky voters will decide who will represent them in Frankfort and Washington D.C. and in local offices. Americans will also be electing a president next year.

As of Friday, Dec. 15, these candidates have filed with the Kentucky secretary of state to run in the May 21 primary.?

U.S. House of Representatives

1st Congressional District

James Comer, of Tompkinsville, Republican Party, Incumbent

2nd Congressional District

William Dakota Compton, of Bowling Green, Democratic Party

Hank Linderman, of Falls of Rough, Democratic Party

Brett Guthrie, of Bowling Green, Republican Party, Incumbent

3rd Congressional District

Morgan McGarvey, of Louisville, Democratic Party, Incumbent

Jared Randall, of Louisville, Democratic Party

Geoffrey “Geoff” Young, of Lexington, Democratic Party

5th Congressional District

Dana Edwards, of Manchester, Republican Party?

David E. Kraftchak Jr., of London, Republican Party

Hal Rogers, of Somerset, Republican Party, Incumbent

6th Congressional District

Jonathan Richardson, of Lexington, Democratic Party

Andy Barr, of Lexington, Republican Party, Incumbent

Kentucky House of Representatives

3rd District

Randy Bridges, of Paducah, Republican Party, Incumbent

4th District

Wade Williams, of Earlington, Republican Party, Incumbent

5th District

Mary Beth Imes, of Murray, Republican Party, Incumbent

6th District

Chris Freeland, of Benton, Republican Party, Incumbent

8th District

Walker Wood Thomas, of Hopkinsville, Republican Party, Incumbent

9th District

Myron Dossett, of Pembroke, Republican Party, Incumbent

13th District

DJ Johnson, of Owensboro, Republican Party

17th District?

Robert B. Duvall, of Bowling Green, Republican Party, Incumbent

18th District

Samara Heavrin, of Leitchfield, Republican Party, Incumbent

19th District

Michael Lee Meredith, of Oakland, Republican Party, Incumbent

20th District

Kevin L. Jackson, of Bowling Green, Republican Party, Incumbent

21st District

Amy Neighbors, of Edmonton, Republican Party, Incumbent

22nd District

Shawn McPherson, of Scottsville, Republican Party, Incumbent

24th District

Brandon Reed, of Hodgenville, Republican Party, Incumbent

25th District

Steve Bratcher, of Elizabethtown, Republican Party, Incumbent

26th District

Peyton Griffee, of Mount Washington, Republican Party

27th District

Nancy Tate, of Brandenburg, Republican Party, Incumbent

28th District

Almaria Baker, of Louisville, Democratic Party

Jared Bauman, of Louisville, Republican Party, Incumbent

29th District

Ricky Santiago,? of Louisville, Democratic Party

Wyatt Allison, of Louisville, Republican Party

31st District?

Colleen Orsella Davis, of Louisville, Democratic Party

Susan Tyler Witten, of Louisville, Republican Party, Incumbent

34th District

Sarah Stalker, of Louisville, Democratic Party, Incumbent

36th District

William “Woody” Zorn, of Louisville, Democratic Party

John F. Hodgson, of Fisherville, Republican Party, Incumbent

37th District

Emily Callaway, of Louisville, Republican Party, Incumbent

38th District

Rachel Roarx, of Louisville, Democratic Party, Incumbent

Carrie Sanders McKeehan, of Louisville, Republican Party

39th District

Ryan Stanford, of Nicholasville, Democratic Party

Matt Lockett, of Nicholasville, Republican Party, Incumbent

41st District

William “Rick” Adams, of Louisville, Democratic Party

Mary Lou Marzian, of Louisville, Democratic Party

44th District

Beverly D. Chester-Burton, of Shively, Democratic Party, Incumbent

45th District

Adam Moore, of Lexington, Democratic Party

Killian Timoney, of Nicholasville, Republican Party, Incumbent

47th District

Robb Adams, of Carrollton, Democratic Party

Felicia Rabourn, of Pendleton, Republican Party, Incumbent

48th District

Kate Farrow, of Crestwood, Democratic Party

Ken Fleming, of Louisville, Republican Party, Incumbent

49th District?

Thomas Huff, of Shepherdsville, Republican Party, Incumbent

50th District

Candy Massaroni, of Bardstown, Republican Party, Incumbent

Andy Stone, of Bardstown, Republican Party

51st District

Michael “Sarge” Pollock, of Campbellsville, Republican Party, Incumbent

53rd District

James Tipton, of Taylorsville, Republican Party, Incumbent

55th District

Kim King, of Harrodsburg, Republican Party, Incumbent

James Toller, of Nicholasville, Republican Party

56th District

Daniel A. Fister, of Versailles, Republican Party, Incumbent

59th District

David Osborne, of Prospect, Republican Party, Incumbent

60th District

Marianne Proctor, of Union, Republican Party, Incumbent

61st District

Savannah Maddox, of Dry Ridge, Republican Party, Incumbent

62th District

Kevin Kidwell, of Stamping Ground, Democratic Party

Tony Hampton, of Georgetown, Republican Party

64th District

Karen Campbell, of Independence, Republican Party

Kim Poore Moser, of Taylor Mill, Republican Party, Incumbent

65th District

Stephanie Dietz, of Edgewood, Republican Party, Incumbent

66th District

Ed Massey, of Hebron, Republican Party

T.J. Roberts, of Burlington, Republican Party

67th District

Rachel Roberts, of Newport, Democratic Party, Incumbent

68th District

Brandon Long, of Fort Thomas, Democratic Party

Mike Clines, of Alexandria, Republican Party, Incumbent

69th District

Steven Doan, of Erlanger, Republican Party, Incumbent

71st District

Josh Bray, of Mt. Vernon, Republican Party, Incumbent

73rd District

Ryan Dotson, of Winchester, Republican Party, Incumbent

74th District

David Hale, of Wellington, Republican Party, Incumbent

77th District

George Brown Jr., of Lexington, Democratic Party, Incumbent

78th District

Mark Hart, of Falmouth, Republican Party, Incumbent

79th District

Chad Aull, of Lexington, Democratic Party, Incumbent

81st District

Deanna Frazier Gordon, of Richmond, Republican Party, Incumbent

82nd District

Nick Wilson, of Williamsburg, Republican Party, Incumbent

83rd District?

Joshua Branscum, of Russell Springs, Republican Party, Incumbent

85th District

Shane Baker, of Somerset, Republican Party, Incumbent

86th District

Tom O’dell Smith, of Gray, Republican Party, Incumbent

87th District

Adam Bowling, of Middlesboro, Republican Party, Incumbent

88th District

Vanessa Grossl, of Georgetown, Republican Party

89th District

Idalia Holland, of Beattyville, Republican Party

Timmy Truett, of McKee, Republican Party, Incumbent

90th District

Derek Lewis, of London, Republican Party, Incumbent

92nd District

John Blanton, of Salyersville, Republican Party, Incumbent

96th District

Patrick Flannery, of Olive Hill, Republican Party, Incumbent

97th District

Bobby W. McCool, of Van Lear, Republican Party, Incumbent

98th District

Aaron Thompson, of Ashland, Republican Party

99th District

Richard White, of Morehead, Republican Party, Incumbent

Kentucky Senate

3rd District

Craig B. Richardson, of Hopkinsville, Republican Party

5th District

Stephen Meredith, of Leitchfield, Republican Party, Incumbent

11th District

Steve Rawlings, of Burlington, Republican Party

13th District

Reggie Thomas, of Lexington, Democratic Party, Incumbent

15th District

Rick Girdler, of Somerset, Republican Party, Incumbent

19th District

Cassie Chambers Armstrong, of Louisville, Democratic Party, Incumbent

21st District?

Brandon J. Storm, of London, Republican Party, Incumbent

27th District

Molly Gene Crain, of Lexington, Democratic Party

29th District

Les Stapleton, of Prestonsburg, Republican Party

Johnnie L. Turner, of Baxter, Republican Party, Incumbent

33rd District

Michael W. Churchill Jr., of Louisville, Democratic Party

Justice of the Supreme Court

5th District

Pamela R. Goodwine, of Lexington

Erin Izzo, of Frankfort

Kentucky Supreme Court, from left, back row, justices Christopher Shea Nickell, Kelly Thompson, Robert B. Conley, Angela McCormick Bisig. From left, front, Debra Hembree Lambert, Chief Justice Laurance B. VanMeter, Michelle M. Keller, Jan. 11, 2023, in the Supreme Court chambers at the state Capitol. (AOC photo/Brian Bohannon)

Kentucky’s recently redrawn congressional and legislative districts? will stand for future elections.?

In an opinion published Thursday morning, the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate’s previous decision that the maps were a result of? “partisan gerrymanders” but did not find them unconstitutional.?

“Regardless of how unusual or eye-raising it may be, we must not erase it unless it plainly leaves the four corners of our constitutional frame,” the opinion, written by Justice Angela McCormick Bisig, says. “In applying the substantially deferential standard we afford to purely political acts by a coordinate branch of government, we perceive no such constitutional infirmity and thus affirm the trial court’s conclusion that the redistricting statutes pass constitutional muster.”

Kentucky Democrats filed the lawsuit after the Republican supermajority in the General Assembly adopted the maps last year. The Supreme Court decided to hear the case earlier this year, bypassing the Court of Appeals.

Justices heard oral arguments in the case in September. At the time, Michael Abate, a Louisville attorney representing Democrats, told reporters the court will have to decide if the state Constitution prohibits a majority party from gerrymandering or creating districts to heavily favor the party in power. He said elections with preordained outcomes because of gerrymandering are “not ‘free or equal,’” as the state Constitution requires.?

However, Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams, a defendant in the lawsuit, said after oral arguments the case hinges on what is in the state Constitution regarding gerrymandering, not just the new maps.?

“Our position is that the Constitution doesn’t speak to this issue at all. If it did, why’d the Democrats gerrymander their maps for 100 years?” Adams said. “So my view is this is a matter in the Constitution left up to the legislature, and they can use their own standards as long as they comply with the Voting Rights Act.”?

In response to Thursday’s ruling, Adams said in a statement was “pleased” that the Court “overwhelmingly rejected the Kentucky Democratic Party’s reckless, frivolous and hypocritical lawsuit that sought to impose a different set of election rules through the courts, following Democrats’ loss of legislative control that they had previously won for decades under those very rules.”

The Republican Party of Kentucky also applauded the decision.

“The highest court in Kentucky has rejected a pathetic attempt by the Democrats to throw out Kentucky’s congressional and state house district maps,” RPK spokesman Sean Southard said. “The Court rightfully rejected the Democrat effort to manipulate the political process and sue their way into the Congress and the state house.”

Kentucky House Democrats said the Supreme Court had upheld “textbook examples of extreme partisan gerrymandering.” House Democratic leaders Reps. Derrick Graham, Cherlynn Stevenson and Rachel Roberts issued this statement:?“It has often been said that voters should be the ones who choose their leaders, not the other way around. We still believe in that, which is why we firmly disagree with today’s Kentucky Supreme Court decision. It gives legislative majorities much more authority to protect themselves at the expense of many voters while guaranteeing more political polarization for decades to come.

“The current congressional and state House maps are textbook examples of extreme partisan gerrymandering, from how they were drawn in secret to how they effectively decided the outcome of most races by the end of the primary. This entire process should have been rejected today; instead, we fear it will now become standard procedure,” the Democrats said.

The Kentucky Democratic Party also expressed disappointment with the ruling.

“Today’s ruling reversing the lower court’s finding that these maps are extreme partisan gerrymanders – while deeply disappointing – will be an important bulwark against future efforts to draw more extreme partisan gerrymandered maps in Kentucky,” Kentucky Democratic Party Chair Colmon Elridge said in a statement. “The Republican majority worked behind closed doors to draw districts that cut up communities for partisan gain to beat incumbents they couldn’t beat on a fair playing field. Frankfort politicians should not decide who they represent, and Republicans will only grow bolder in coming decades if we don’t put a stop to the GOP majority. Kentucky’s future is on the line and the KDP intends to fight for it.”

In his weekly press conference, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear called for a constitutional amendment, though noted it would be difficult to pass in the General Assembly.

?????Justice Christopher Shea Nickell, concurring with the majority opinion in part while also dissenting in part, wrote “ any comprehensive remedy for the deleterious effects of partisan gerrymandering must be addressed through the political process.”?

“Should the people discern egregious, arrogant political abuse upon review of the legislative redistricting plans enacted by their elected representatives in the General Assembly, their ultimate remedy lies in a constitutional amendment or expulsion of the perpetrators at the polls,” Nickell said. “In short, review and remedy of controversies related to political gerrymandering reside with the people.”

Justice Robert B. Conley, in dissent, wrote he agreed with much of the court’s analysis but disagreed that Democrats “had standing to bring such claims in the first place.”?

Gov. Andy Beshear and Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman wave to the crowd after winning reelection on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023. Democrats gathered at Old Forrester’s Paristown Hall in Louisville. (Austin Anthony for the Kentucky Lantern)

Last month, voters gave Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman a second term. Next week, they’ll be inaugurated again at the State Capitol in Frankfort.?

The 62nd inauguration on Tuesday, Dec. 12, will feature Kentuckians to celebrate a theme of “Forward, Together.” The festivities include an inaugural ball, a parade, performances and more.?

During the public swearing-in ceremony Tuesday afternoon, Grammy-nominated artist Tyler Childers will give a musical performance and Kentucky Poet Laureate Silas House will give a reading. Both are Eastern Kentucky natives.?

KET will broadcast events throughout the day on TV and on its website, ket.org.?

Schedule of Events

Inauguration events begin at 8:30 a.m. EST and continue throughout the evening. A detailed schedule can be found at the inaugural website.?

• Inaugural breakfast reception at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History, 8:30 a.m.
• Inaugural worship service at the First Christian Church, 316 Ann St., 9:30 a.m.
• Inaugural parade, begins at Capital Avenue at the end of the Main Street bridge and ends in front of the Capitol, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.?
• Inaugural prelude on the Capitol steps, 1:30 p.m.
• Public swearing-in ceremony at the Capitol, 2 p.m.?
• The Grand March in the Capitol rotunda, 6 p.m., doors open at 5 p.m.?
• The Inaugural Ball on the Capitol grounds, ticketed event, 7 to 11 p.m.

Parking information?

Free parking and a shuttle service will be available on Inauguration Day. All Capitol parking areas will be permit-parking only.?

Capital Avenue, Shelby Street and other roads around the Capitol will be closed between 7 a.m. and 1 p.m.?

The shuttle service will be available at the remote parking location at the Cabinet for Health and Family Services building off Martin Luther King Boulevard between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.?

Those with a handicap license tag or mirror hang tag may park in a designated parking lot at Shelby Street and Lafayette Drive, on the west side of the Capitol.?

For people who attend the Breakfast reception, a Frankfort Transit bus will go between the Fourth and Logan streets shuttle stop to the History Center from 8:15 to 9:45 a.m. The shuttle will also go to Capital Avenue for the parade.?

Parking will be available for the Grand March Tuesday evening on streets around the Capitol, including Capital Avenue, Shelby, Todd, Campbell and Fourth streets.?

A map of street closures, parking, shuttle locations and the parade route can be found here.??

Poster contest

As part of the inauguration, the governor and First Lady Britainy Beshear will recognize winners of a “Forward, Together” poster contest for children. The deadline to postmark submissions was Tuesday, Dec. 5. Winners, as well as their families and school representatives, will be invited to the Capitol on Tuesday, where their artwork will be displayed.

Election workers process ballots at the Arapahoe County Elections Facility in Littleton, Colorado, on Nov. 3, 2020. (Carl Payne for Colorado Newsline)

Lately, a rough consensus has emerged among people who study the impact of voting policies: Though they often spark fierce partisan fighting, most changes to voting laws do little to affect overall turnout, much less election results.

But one fast-growing reform appears to stand out as an exception.

When every registered voter gets sent a ballot in the mail — a system known as universal vote-by-mail — voting rates tend to rise, numerous studies have found.

Advocates for mail voting say these findings haven’t gotten the attention they deserve, and that they should lead more states that want to boost turnout to adopt UVM, as it’s called.

“[T]o a remarkable degree, most of the nation’s leading journalists, democracy reform organizations, and elected officials continue to largely ignore, downplay — or even dismiss outright – the potentially profound implications of these noticeably high turnout rates,” said a research paper released last month by the National Vote at Home Institute, which advocates for increased use of mail voting.

Currently, eight states — California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington — use UVM.

Vote by mail attacked by Trump

Efforts in recent years by many states to make it easier to vote by mail prompted a furious backlash from former President Donald Trump and his backers, who have repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that mail voting is dangerously vulnerable to fraud.

Perhaps no state incurred Trump’s wrath more than Nevada, which, along with California, introduced UVM in 2020 in response to the pandemic.

“The governor of Nevada should not be in charge of ballots. The ballots are going to be a disaster for our country,” Trump said ahead of the 2020 election, referring to the state’s then-governor, Democrat Steve Sisolak (In fact, Sisolak was not “in charge of ballots.” Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, was). “You’re going to have problems with the ballots like nobody has ever seen before.”

Since replacing Sisolak this year, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, has pushed for eliminating UVM. (“Sending ballots to more than 1.9 million registered voters is inefficient and unnecessary,” Lombardo said in January.) But Democrats, who control the state legislature, have shown no interest in scrapping the system.

So great was the GOP’s suspicion of the practice in 2022 that some voters were told by party activists to hold onto mail ballots and hand them in on Election Day at their polling place, rather than mailing them.

But Trump and Republicans have lately backtracked, telling supporters to take advantage of mail voting rather than handing an advantage to Democrats. In June, the Republican National Committee announced a new get-out-the-vote drive encouraging early and mail voting.

States tinker with mail voting

Still, over 20 states have sought to restrict mail voting since 2020. Ohio has shortened the timeframe to apply for mail ballots and imposed new signature requirements, while Arizona now removes people from its list to receive a mail ballot if they go for more than two years without voting.

Among states looking to expand mail voting, not all have gone as far as UVM. Both New York and Pennsylvania, among other states, have loosened their rules to allow anyone to cast an absentee ballot by mail, rather than requiring an excuse — a system known as no-excuse absentee. But the voter still must take the trouble to apply to receive their absentee ballot, rather than being mailed one automatically.

Experts say there isn’t strong evidence that these more modest approaches to mail voting do much to boost turnout

Other reforms that likewise have become core to the Democratic platform on voting policy, like adding early voting opportunities, also haven’t consistently been shown to increase voting rates. Allowing people to register at the polls — often called same-day registration — has in some studies been associated with small turnout increases.

By contrast, the research on UVM finds a consistent and significant impact.

Advocates say that’s hardly surprising. Under UVM, election officials simply mail ballots to directly everyone on the voter rolls, almost literally putting a ballot in voters’ hands. Voters can return their ballot either through the mail or by leaving it in a secure ballot dropbox.

Research studies

A 2022 paper by Eric McGhee and Jennifer Paluch of the Public Policy Institute of California and Mindy Romero of the University of Southern California found that UVM increased turnout among registered voters by 5.6 percentage points in the 2020 election — what the authors called “a substantial and robust positive effect.”

A 2018 paper by the data firm Pantheon Analytics, which works for Democrats and progressive groups, compared Utah counties that used UVM with those that didn’t, and found that the system boosted turnout by 5-7 percentage points among registered voters.

And a forthcoming paper by Michael Ritter of Washington State University, to be published in the November 2023 edition of the Election Law Journal, looks at various mail voting systems over the last decade and finds that UVM led to an 8-point increase in registered voter turnout.

By and large, states that use UVM appear to see higher voting rates than those that don’t. The National Vote at Home Institute research paper found that eight of the 11 states that used UVM in 2020 were in the top 15 states for turnout of active registered voters. And none of those eight were battleground states, which tend to see higher turnout.

Two other states using UVM for the first time in 2020 ranked first and second on improved turnout compared to 2016 — Hawaii, which saw a 14% jump, and Utah, which saw an 11% jump.

The paper also found that UVM has a particularly large impact on turnout rates for young voters, Black and Latino voters, who tend to vote at lower rates than average.

No advantage for one party?

Advocates say there’s another reason why policymakers should have no reluctance to embrace UVM: Despite its impact on turnout, it doesn’t help one party more than the other, according to numerous studies.

“Universal VBM does not appear to tilt turnout toward the Democratic party, nor does it appear to affect election outcomes meaningfully,” a representative 2020 paper by a group of Stanford University political scientists concluded.

McGhee said that finding could have the effect of turning down the political heat on the issue.

“Hopefully as the evidence gets out that it boosts turnout without impacting partisan outcomes, that part of it will fade a little bit,” he said. “And it’ll just be seen as a good-government reform.”

Kentucky Supreme Court (front, from left) incoming Chief JuDebra Hembree Lambert, outgoing Chief Justice Laurance VanMeter, Michelle Keller. (Back row, from left) Christopher Shea Nickell, Kelly Thompson, Robert Conley, Angela McCormick Bisig. (AOC photo/Brian Bohannon)

FRANKFORT — The Kentucky Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday about whether Republican-drawn U.S. and Kentucky House districts are gerrymandered and if that matters under the state constitution.?

Kentucky Democrats filed the lawsuit after the Republican supermajority in the General Assembly adopted the maps last year. Attorneys for the Democrats and the Commonwealth of Kentucky argued before Kentucky’s seven justices, who will later make a ruling on the lawsuit.?

The Supreme Court decided to hear the case earlier this year, bypassing the Court of Appeals. Previously, Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate ruled that the maps were a result of? “partisan gerrymanders” but he declined to find them unconstitutional.

Congressional and legislative districts are redrawn by the state legislature after a new U.S. Census is released every ten years. Tuesday’s oral arguments came more than a year after the General Assembly enacted the maps. The court’s future ruling could impact elections in 2024 or 2026.?

Michael Abate, a Louisville attorney representing Democrats, told reporters the court will have to decide if the state constitution prohibits a majority party from gerrymandering or creating districts to heavily favor the party in power. He said elections with preordained outcomes because of gerrymandering are “not ‘free or equal,’” as the state constitution requires. He said evidence shows that only seven of 100 House districts had a 25% chance of going for either party.

“The results were preordained virtually everywhere, and we proved that’s not because of Kentucky’s unique political geography,” Abate said. “It was an intentional choice by the mapmakers to draw lines to favor Republicans at every turn.”?

Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams, a defendant in the lawsuit, told reporters after the court recessed that the case hinges on what is in the state constitution regarding gerrymandering, not just the new maps.?

“Our position is that the constitution doesn’t speak to this issue at all. If it did, why’d the Democrats gerrymander their maps for 100 years?” Adams said. “So my view is this is a matter in the constitution left up to the legislature, and they can use their own standards as long as they comply with the Voting Rights Act.”?

Inside the courtroom, Abate first defended the Democrats’ position. Justice Angela McCormick Bisig pressed Abate about the 2022 elections, which saw Republicans take 80 seats in the 100-member state House. She said the predicted outcome of maps proposed by Democrats would have seen 77 Republicans elected — a fact she said “that is hard to overlook.” In response, Abate said if even a small number of seats flip, “the governance is weaker as a whole.”?

Victor Maddox, an assistant deputy attorney general representing the commonwealth, told justices that Kentucky Democrats became a superminority “not even with a map drawn by political adversaries.” That, Maddox argued, was a strong reason for the court to stay out of the political process of redistricting.?

‘Comer hook’

Justice Christopher Shea Nickell, who represents Western Kentucky on the Supreme Court, questioned Maddox about the need for the new 1st Congressional District, which stretches from the Mississippi River before arching northward to Frankfort. Dubbed the “Comer hook,” the district’s reach into Central Kentucky is thought to benefit U.S. Rep. James Comer whose residence is in Frankfort.?

“It would seem entirely reasonable to expect anyone aspiring to represent our region to have pride … in its people, heritage and culture to want to actually reside within its traditional borders,” Nickell said.?

Maddox responded that the change to the district under the Republican plan was “slight.” He added that the other congressional districts except for the 3rd District “became more compact” as a result of the redistricting.

The maps debated Tuesday will not have an impact on November’s general election, which is for statewide races. The court’s decision could impact 2024 and 2026 elections.

“But we do hope the court will rule by early next year in the legislative session so we have some clarity,” Adams said.?

Both Adams and Abate said that if the court rules the maps cannot be used, the General Assembly will be tasked with making new ones.?

(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

It’s no secret: U.S. democracy is under serious threat.

Politicians use rigged maps?to entrench themselves in power, allowing them to ignore the will of voters. Hundreds of members of Congress, state lawmakers, and top state officials — including chief elections officials —?deny the results?of the last presidential contest. And a leading candidate for 2024 talks openly about abusing the power of the federal government to?retaliate?against his political opponents.

“No longer can we take for granted that people will accept election results as legitimate,” warned a recent?report?by the Safeguarding Democracy Project, a committee of election experts convened by the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. “The United States faces continued threats to peaceful transitions of power after election authorities (or courts) have declared a presidential election winner.”

No surprise, then, that more than 8 in 10 respondents to a recent?poll?said they were worried about the state of American democracy, with 1 in 4 saying they’re very worried.

But much of the media is failing to convey the danger.

At the first Republican presidential debate last month,?not a single question?was asked about democracy.

Even when the subject is given attention, it’s often treated in the same way journalists cover fights over more traditional issues like taxes, health care, or education: Reporters quote both sides — those looking to restrict democracy, and those working to protect it — assess the political implications, and perhaps lament our growing “polarization”.

A growing number of newsrooms are recognizing that this approach doesn’t meet the moment. Democracy is different from those other issues, because it underlies all of them. Without a healthy democracy, voters can’t make collective decisions that have legitimacy, no matter the issue. Nor can Americans count on having a free press to cover the debate.

That’s why a drive is underway to help bolster the foundations of our system through “pro-democracy” coverage. On Friday, States Newsroom is joining 135 news organizations for?Democracy Day 2023, a nationwide pro-democracy reporting collaborative, launched last year, that’s organized by Montclair State University’s Center for Cooperative Media in New Jersey and the Institute for Nonprofit News.

The pro-democracy coverage that participating newsrooms will produce can take a range of forms. It might be journalism that shines a light on the most urgent threats to democracy and holds anti-democratic actors accountable.

But it also can be journalism that gives citizens the tools they need to participate in the process; or that explains how local government works and helps people access needed services; or that uplifts the ordinary Americans working to protect and strengthen democracy.

“It doesn’t have to be negative and only focus on the threats,” said Beatrice Forman, a reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer and Democracy Day’s project coordinator. “Pro-democracy journalism can also focus on solutions to those threats: Who are the people on the ground doing things to enfranchise people and to make people feel comfortable exercising their civic rights?”

Here are just a few of the stories that States Newsroom’s 36 outlets have produced for Democracy Day:

• The Alabama Reflector?is digging into a voting conundrum: Why is the state’s turnout rate sliding — it averaged?just under 50%?in the last two national elections — even as the number of Alabamians on the voter rolls has increased?
• The Kansas Reflector is asking how campaigns and election officials can?ensure young voters stay engaged. They turned out in high numbers for an August referendum on abortion rights, the Reflector notes, but many then stayed home in November.

• The Michigan Advance?looks at the impact of the state’s major voting rights expansion since 2018, which has included same-day voter registration, no-excuse mail voting and more. Advocates of expanded access to the ballot say they aren’t finished yet.

• The Nebraska Examiner is?showing readers how their government works, breaking down the functions of the state’s executive branch and spotlighting the decision-makers running key departments.

• NC Newsline is helping North Carolinians exercise their democratic rights, by explaining how to ensure the voting experience goes smoothly now that the state’s voter ID law is in effect.
• The Kentucky Lantern talks with election officials about shortage of poll workers ahead of the 2023 general election.
• And the Pennsylvania Capital-Star is highlighting how the state’s closed primary system — in which only registered Democrats and Republicans can vote — leaves out over 1 million registered voters. What could be more democratic, Capital-Star Editor Kim Lyons asks, than opening the process of choosing candidates to more people?

It may be only one day. But Democracy Day aims to kick-start a more permanent shift in approach.

The goal, said Forman, “is to really catalyze an industry-wide transformation towards content that doesn’t treat politics like a game, doesn’t cater to political insiders, (but instead) caters to actual people wanting to know more about how their government works.”

(Abbey Cutrer)

Editor’s note: This article is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit?usdemocracyday.org.

For several years, Gregory and Wynella Bethards have worked at the polls on Election Day in Jefferson County.?

The Louisville couple said they enjoy being part of the process. Gregory said “it’s a civic duty, privilege and obligation to serve the community,” but there is some anxiety before voters come through the doors.?

Every Election Day begins early, he said. Election workers want to make sure everything, including voting equipment, is ready for when polls open at 6 a.m.?

Wynella added another possible curveball — maybe another poll worker “for some reason didn’t show up.”?

In recent elections, Wynella said she has noticed a drop in election workers, a trend seen by election officials across Kentucky. While health concerns prompted by the covid pandemic are a primary reason, some poll workers may worry about their safety following the contentious 2020 presidential election where Donald Trump has pushed the lie that the election was stolen from him through election fraud.

“I think Kentucky’s elections are safe and secure. I know the clerks do everything they can to ensure that the election officials, the poll workers are kept safe during their time at the polls,” Karen Sellers, State Board of Elections executive director, told Kentucky Lantern.

‘It is a big job’

Sellers said most poll workers are retirees. However, amid the coronavirus pandemic, that age group may have concerns about their health and want to avoid possible exposure to illness.??

In the 2020 presidential election year, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams agreed to changes to Kentucky’s election procedures in the wake of the pandemic. No-excuse absentee ballots and extended early voting periods were available to voters, meaning that fewer polling locations were needed on Election Day.?

Sellers said election workers take their jobs “very seriously.” State law requires party parity at each precinct, meaning an equal number of registered Democrats and Republicans.?

“It is a big job. And it’s an important job. And we want everyone to serve, if they can,” she said. “And if they can, reach out to their county clerk and let them know that they’re interested in serving.”?

Andrew Imel, who is in his first term as the Greenup County clerk, said his office made it through the primary election “just on the skin of our teeth.”? The county has 16 polling locations and? needs at least 64 workers, not counting alternates, to meet the minimum four-person per poll staffing level. The office had only one alternate poll worker left.?

Before he was elected in November 2022, Imel said he noticed a local shortage of poll workers as well as a lower voter turnout.?

“We had a lot of veteran poll workers that personally called me and said they’re no longer (able to) help and stuff like that,” Imel said. “So we really did more or less run into a wall with that.”

Bobbie Holsclaw, who is serving her seventh term as the Jefferson County clerk, said her office sees a shortage of poll workers “just about every election” going back several years. Her office needs between 2,300 and 2,400 poll workers to oversee each election.

Party parity is a challenge for the county, she said. Jefferson County, which has more Democratic voters, has struggled with recruiting Republicans. However, local parties are required by law to provide names of possible workers to county clerks.?

Election officials interviewed by the Lantern say heightened election scrutiny may contribute to their difficulty of recruiting election workers.?

Holsclaw said “there’s some truth to that” and added that some churches and businesses no longer want to be polling locations.

Since the results of the 2020 presidential election, the nation has seen a rise in election doubt. Despite Democrat Joe Biden’s win,? Trump, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, continues to push false claims of victory and cast doubt on the security of elections. According to an August CNN poll, 61% of Americans said Biden did legitimately win enough votes to win the presidency, while 38% believe that he did not.

Sellers said Kentucky has not had serious threats at polling locations. She said county sheriff departments work closely with county clerks during elections for security.??

Holsclaw also said Jefferson County has not had serious security problems on Election Day.?

In Greenup County, election doubt has not been a concern, Imel said.?

Recruitment efforts

For those who do the job, Sellers said they find it “rewarding.”?

“If you do it once, you understand what an important job it is for the voter and the voting experience and helping people be able to cast their ballots and have a voice in an election,” Sellers said.?

Before Election Day, workers are required to take a four- to six-hour training course. On the day of the election, they may have to answer questions from voters about using machines or other questions about the process. Some workers also assist with early voting days ahead of Election Day. Counties also recruit alternates to work as back up.?

“It’s a 14-hour day for a person to work the polls. They usually have to come at 5 a.m. They are responsible for assisting and setting up the equipment,” Sellers said. “Really, they’re the first person that greets the voter and assists them with the voting experience.”?

Poll workers are paid, but their wages vary from county to county. When Holsclaw first started as clerk, the pay was around $100 for the day plus $25 for training, and increased to $200 a day several years ago. Last year, the pay rose to $300 in Jefferson County, a move that Holsclaw said increased interest.?

Holsclaw said that her office has “tried very hard” to get younger people involved, but “you don’t see the enthusiasm or the excitement among younger people as you have the older generation.” In addition to working closely with local political parties, Holsclaw’s office tries to recruit election workers by visiting community groups, like veterans at the local VFW, talking with college students or going to local fairs and festivals.?

“I don’t think really that Kentucky is any different than any other states (in that regard),” she added. “I think it’s kind of a trend that’s across the country.”

Imel said his office relies on other poll workers to recruit, spreading the need through word of mouth as well as posting information on social media. The election board also speaks with other committees.?

Looking ahead, Imel said his office is thinking about how to improve voter turnout, which includes taking steps like getting people registered to vote.?

“Once they’re registered to vote, it would more or less be a domino effect. We’ll just keep them in the circle if they want to be a poll worker.”?

As for the Bethards, being an election worker is a way to serve their community. For people who are considering being a poll worker, Wynella said not to be intimidated by the training because they will likely work with other experienced poll workers on Election Day.?

“I just enjoy being part of the process,” Wynella said. “I like to see who all gets out and votes.”

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani walking through the Georgia Capitol in December 2020. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis says she’s aiming to start a trial against Donald Trump and his allies within six months of a grand jury’s Monday indictment on charges of a multi-state criminal conspiracy to overturn the former president’s narrow defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Trump, several members of legal and political advisors, and state and local political allies are accused of spreading unfounded allegations of massive voting fraud, which led to incidents such as the breach of the state’s voting system in Coffee County in January 2021, and a slate of Georgia Republicans filing false electoral votes declaring Trump the winner.

The 19 defendants face multiple felony counts including racketeering and conspiracy, making false statements, filing false documents, impersonating a public officer, computer theft and trespass and conspiracy to defraud the state and other offenses.

Willis said that she wanted to resolve the election interference case before the 2024 presidential election, in which Republican nominee Trump could possibly face Biden in a rematch. The defendants will have until noon on Friday, Aug. 25 to turn themselves in, Willis said.

Read the 98-page indictment here.

Willis’ investigation gained momentum after a recording of a phone call was made public in which Trump asked Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough Georgia votes to sway the election in his favor.

“Fani Willis has brought a case that is as large and as comprehensive as the attempted coup itself; looking at that nationally but also through the lens of Georgia,” said Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at public policy think-tank The Brookings Institution and CNN legal analyst. “It’s one of the most important cases that has been brought in the history of our country.”

Below is a list of some of the allegations listed in the indictment that led the grand jury to find probable cause against the former president and 18 others.

Trump’s attorneys, advisors

Rudy Giuliani, former Trump attorney and ex-New York City mayor: At Georgia Legislative hearings following the 2020 election, the ex-U.S. attorney promoted conspiracy theories about election fraud while advocating for lawmakers to intervene on Trump’s behalf. Among Giuliani’s recommendations was that an alternate slate of GOP electors should cast votes for Trump despite state election officials confirming Biden the winner.

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows: Alleged to have set up a Jan. 2, 2021, phone conversation in which Trump asked Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to tilt Georgia’s election in the outgoing president’s favor. The conversation took place a few days prior to the Jan. 6th U.S. Capitol attack as Congress was set to certify Biden’s election. The indictment also alleges Meadows texted a Georgia Secretary of State investigator in December asking if Fulton County’s ballot signature verification could be sped up if Trump’s campaign provided financial assistance.

Ex-Trump attorney John Eastman: He promoted a dubious legal argument that he claimed could lead to Vice President Mike Pence overriding the 2020 presidential election results.

Sidney Powell, attorney: Indicted on charges of tampering with electronic ballot markers and tabulating machines in Coffee County voting systems breach. Powell contacted a computer forensics company to help recover data from voting equipment.

Jenna Ellis, attorney: Accused of making false statements about election fraud to state officials in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona in an attempt to have illegitimate electors appointed in those states, the indictment says.

Lawyer Kenneth Chesebro: Provided the documents signed by Georgia’s Republican electors in an attempt to have Congress consider them as legitimate electoral votes for Trump, according to the indictment.

Jeffrey Bossert Clark, Trump’s top environmental lawyer: Alleged to have conspired in election interference by attempting to solicit the U.S. attorney general and deputy attorney general in December 2020 to provide false statements to high-ranking elected officials in Georgia and several other states that the U.S. Department of Justice had identified significant concerns that might have changed the outcome of the election.

2021 Georgia GOP false electors

One of the focal points of the election interference probe are the events that led up to and followed the Dec. 14, 2020, meeting where sixteen Georgia Republican electors, who signed false election certificates that were sent to the vice president and other government officials to be counted by Congress.

The bogus Republican electors met at the state Capitol on the same day as legitimate state Democratic electors selected Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.

The indictments do not cover the entire slate of Georgians who signed the fraudulent electoral certificates. At least eight of the electors have accepted plea deals, agreeing to cooperate with Fulton prosecutors, according to court filings.

Former Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer: The staunch Trump supporter helped coordinate and served as a Republican fake elector as they cast their ballots in favor of Trump while meeting inside the state Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020.

Cathleen Latham: Latham is ex-chair of the Coffee County GOP Party who played a role in the voting systems breach at Coffee County’s election office in 2021. Surveillance footage, uncovered by plaintiffs embroiled in a voting system security lawsuit, shows Latham leading forensics experts for Trump-allied lawyers into the Coffee County election offices in order to gain unfettered access to the Dominion Voting Systems used statewide for elections. Latham was also indicted for serving as a Republican false elector.

State Sen. Shawn Still: The Norcross Republican is serving his first term in the state Legislature and has previously served in leadership positions with the Georgia Republican Party.

Other Fulton County election interference indictments

Former Coffee County Elections Director Misty Hampton and bail bondsman Scott Hall: Both were indicted on charges of tampering with electronic ballot markers and tabulating machines related to the Coffee County voting breach.

Stephen Cliffgard Lee, Harrison W.P. Floyd and Trevian Kutti: Indicted on charges related to making numerous calls and sending text messages to Fulton County poll worker Ruby Freeman, who in 2020 became a prime target of Trump and other conspiracy theorists pushing unfounded ballot stuffing allegations when they served as poll workers at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena. According to the indictment, Lee, Kutti and Floyd falsely offered Freeman protection in order to influence her testimony before government officials.

This article was first published by the?Georgia Recorder, a sister publication of Kentucky Lantern in the States Newsroom network.

There was a large media presence outside the Fulton County courthouse in downtown Atlanta Monday as prosecutors began to present their case inside. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder

This story has been updated.?

Former President Donald Trump and several members of his inner circle were indicted Monday in Fulton County’s sweeping investigation into 2020 election interference.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis held a press conference late Monday night to briefly discuss the grand jury’s felony conspiracy and racketeering charges being levied against the 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner and other allies that include his former chief-of-staff Mark Meadows, his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and ex-Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer.

Nineteen people were indicted on 41 charges after the grand jury’s vote to hand up indictments and Fulton Judge Robert McBurney’s unsealing of the charges Monday evening.

“All elections in our nation are administered by the states, which are given the responsibility of ensuring a fair process and an accurate counting of the votes,” Willis said late Monday evening. “That includes elections for presidential electors, Congress state officials and local offices. The state’s role in this process is essential to the functioning of our democracy.”

“The indictment alleges that rather than abide by Georgia’s legal process for election challenges, the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result,” Willis said.

It is the fourth time the former president has been indicted this year, and it is the second indictment directly tied to Trump’s attempts to stay in power after losing his bid for reelection.

The defendants will have until noon on Friday, Aug. 25 to turn themselves in, Willis said.

Read the 98-page indictment here.

“I remind everyone here that an indictment is only a series of allegations based on a grand jury determination of probable cause to support the charges. It is now the duty of my office to prove these charges in the indictment beyond a reasonable doubt at trial,” Willis said.

Willis said she plans to push for a trial to be held within the next six months, but acknowledged that will be up to the judge.

Felony charges of false statements, forgery, racketeering and election fraud, solicitation of a government employee have also been filed against in the case that’s been more than a year in the making.

The sweeping probe centers on Trump and a number of his supporters who lodged unfounded claims that widespread election fraud cost him the 2020 election in Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes. In early 2022, Willis launched the investigation after a recording of a phone call where Trump asked Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes was released to the public.

Willis, an Atlanta Democrat, has been accused of political bias by Trump and his attorneys who argue she has held fundraisers for candidates of her party in the past.

And on Monday, Reuters reported that a document outlining charges against Trump appeared briefly on the Fulton County court’s website.?A Fulton County courts spokesperson issued a statement Monday in response to a “fictitious document that has been circulated online and reported by various media outlets.”

Trump’s Georgia-based attorneys blasted the brief appearance of the document in a statement, calling it part of a pattern that has “plagued this case from its very inception.”

“This was not a simple administrative mistake,” Drew Findling and Jennifer Little said in a joint statement. “A proposed indictment should only be in the hands of the District Attorney’s Office, yet it somehow made its way to the clerk’s office and was assigned a case number and a judge before the grand jury even deliberated.”

Trump also took to his social media site, Truth Social, to bemoan the indictment, calling Willis a “rabid partisan” and accusing her of timing the indictment to “maximally interfere” in next year’s presidential race. Willis brushed off the criticism when asked about the president’s comments.

“I make decisions in this office based on the facts and the law. The law is completely nonpartisan,” Willis said.

The group of 16 fake electors who met at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020 includes current and former state and local GOP officials, ex-Coffee County GOP Chairwoman Cathy Latham, and newly elected state Sen. Shawn Still.

Giuliani pressed Georgia Republicans to set themselves up as alternate electors to counter state Democrat electors casting votes for Joe Biden after GOP election officials confirmed the current president as the winner of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. The plan at first was for the “fake electors” to serve as a placeholder should the former president prevail in court challenges to Georgia’s results. But when Trump’s court challenges were all either dismissed or withdrawn, the alternate electors still signed paperwork swearing they were legitimate delegates.

An eventful day?

Even before the prospect of a Monday grand jury decision, a throng of national and local press had assembled outside the Fulton County courthouse Monday morning where they tried to catch the witnesses as they left to quiz them on the process.

The relative calm outside the courthouse was disrupted at one point Monday when opponents of a controversial public safety training center attempted to march through the area around the courthouse that has been closed off for the indictments. Among the group’s chants: “Donald Trump. Andre Dickens. I don’t know the f—— difference.”

But inside the courthouse the grand jury proceeding moved at a faster pace than expected, and by late Monday afternoon, an indictment seemed possible. At least two witnesses – former Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and Atlanta journalist George Chidi – who were originally set to testify Tuesday were moved up to Monday.

Duncan, who did not seek reelection last year, brushed aside specific questions about his grand jury testimony Monday but he spoke generally about how he viewed his participation in the process. And politically, he described this moment in time as a potential “pivot point” for Republicans.

“I think it’s important to tell the truth,” Duncan told reporters afterwards. “And to respond to the constitutional duties of answering the questions of the grand jury. It’s important for us as a country to finally figure out exactly what happened, and let Americans decide. Instead of misinformation and tweets, let America decide what’s next for us.”

Other witnesses include state Sen. Jen Jordan and state Rep. Bee Nguyen, two Democrats who were part of the December 2020 legislative meetings where Rudy Giuliani pushed a false narrative in hopes of getting the General Assembly to intervene.

Nguyen confirmed in a statement Monday that she had testified before the grand jury.

“No individual is above the law, and I will continue to fully cooperate with any legal proceedings seeking the truth and protecting our democracy,” Nguyen said. “I believe that every individual who wrongfully and illegally tried to overturn our valid elections should be held accountable so that we can have, as John Adams said, ‘a government of laws, and not of men.’”

Chidi, who testified before the special purpose grand jury, said late Monday that he was dismissed without testifying Monday. He called it a victory for journalists.

The independent Atlanta reporter walked into the fake electors’ meeting at the state Capitol after noticing someone who would have likely served as a GOP elector had Trump won Georgia. He said he was intrigued when the person acted strangely toward him, so he started streaming on Facebook live and followed the man into the meeting room before quickly being ushered out.

When he asked what kind of meeting it was, a woman said they were having an “education” meeting, he said.

“Plainly, they were not having an education meeting. So, up until five minutes ago, the district attorney believed that that observation was relevant to these legal proceedings,” Chidi told a group of reporters who swarmed around him as he left the courthouse. “And perhaps it still is, but the jury may have enough information without me to make a decision.”

Georgia Recorder is a sister publication of Kentucky Lantern and part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

In Mount Vernon, Ohio, a yard sign against Issue 1 which would have made it harder to get voter initiatives on the ballot. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal)

Ohio voters have rejected state Issue 1, which sought to make it harder for voters to pass constitutional amendments, the Associated Press has projected.

The full counting of unofficial results is ongoing, but the AP has officially projected that the “No” side has won.

As of 9 p.m., 1,262,555 votes had been counted, and the No side was winning 60% to 40%.

Results will remain unofficial until they are certified by county boards of elections later this month. Issue 1 was the only question on the ballot Aug. 8.

Issue 1 proposed to raise the threshold for passing amendments to the Ohio Constitution from a simple majority of 50% plus one to 60%. It also proposed to require citizen amendment initiatives gather signatures from all 88 Ohio counties instead of the current 44, and sought to eliminate a 10-day curing period to correct invalidated signatures.

The controversial measure was first introduced by Republican Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and Ashville Republican state Rep. Brian Stewart late last year. After failing to place it on the May primary ballot, Ohio Republican lawmakers brought back a special August election for the proposal this summer, after eliminating most August elections with legislation in December 2022.

Ohio voters are deciding if it’s too easy to pass ballot measures. Other states are watching.

LaRose originally denied that the effort to make it more difficult for voters to pass constitutional amendments was tied to an abortion rights amendment proposal that will be considered by Ohio voters in November. However, in a letter to fellow Republican lawmakers shortly after introducing the proposal, Stewart said they should support the effort to stop both the abortion rights amendment as well as any further anti-gerrymandering reform voters might bring.

On May 22, LaRose told a Seneca County Republican Party dinner that Issue 1 was “100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”

LaRose campaigned vigorously to try to convince voters to pass the proposal, making campaign appearances with an anti-abortion lobbyist named Mike Gonidakis, and sharing a debate stage with Gonidakis on television to argue for the Yes side.

An opinion poll conducted in July showed 59% of Ohioans support placing abortion rights in the state constitution.

Issue 1 was opposed by a coalition of more than 240 bipartisan groups across Ohio, four bipartisan former governors, five bipartisan former attorneys general, the Libertarian Party of Ohio, the Ohio Green Party, the Ohio Forward Party, and a wide variety of union groups,?as well as good-government groups such as the League of Women Voters of Ohio and Common Cause Ohio.

The Issue 1 amendment change was brought to the ballot with the votes of all 26 Ohio Senate Republicans including Senate President Matt Huffman, and 62 out of 67 Ohio House Republicans including House Speaker Jason Stephens.

Issue 1 was endorsed by LaRose as well as Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, Attorney General Dave Yost, Ohio Auditor Keith Faber, Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague, Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, and groups including Ohio Right to Life, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, the Ohio Restaurant Association, the Ohio Farm Bureau, and the Center for Christian Virtue.

Ohio Capital Journal is sister newsroom of Kentucky Lantern as part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.?

David Leist of Columbus, left, a field organizer for Ohio Citizen Action, hands registered voter Richard Hall a flyer with information while canvassing against Ohio Issue 1 which if passed at the Aug. 8 special election would require a 60% vote to pass future citizen-initiated amendments, including the Reproductive Freedom Amendment, which will be on the ballot in November, on July 25, 2023, in a neighborhood on the northeast side of Columbus. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal)

CLEVELAND — Ohioans over the last century have used the state’s ballot initiative process to pass constitutional amendments that raised the minimum wage, integrated the National Guard and removed the phrase “white male” from the constitution’s list of voter eligibility requirements.

Now, lawmakers want to make it much tougher for an initiative to be approved. Opponents of the effort, who are leading in the polls, say doing so would undermine democracy. Whoever prevails, the verdict could reverberate far beyond the Buckeye State, as other states also eye limits on ballot initiatives.

Since mid-July, Ohioans have been voting on a new ballot measure, drafted by the Republican-controlled legislature and known as Issue 1, that would require future initiatives to be approved by 60% of voters, rather than the simple majority needed now. Also, starting on Jan. 1, 2024, the measure would mandate that, to get an issue on the ballot in the first place, backers gather signatures in all 88 Ohio counties, double the 44 now needed.

GOP lawmakers and their supporters say it’s too easy for out-of-state interests to use the initiative process to change the state’s constitution. Among other examples, they point to a 2009 ballot measure that legalized casino gambling in the state, which passed with 52% of the vote after national gambling interests spent over $50 million in support.

States Newsroom partnered with News 5 Cleveland to meet the organizers and canvassers on the ground. The team spent one day with opponents of Issue 1 and the next with supporters.

“We believe that a 60% threshold is absolutely critical to protecting our constitution from these outside influences,” state Sen. Jerry Cirino, a Republican, said in an interview at the headquarters of the Lake County GOP in Painesville, about 30 miles east of Cleveland.

And, though it isn’t a message they emphasize publicly, Republicans also have said that they want to make it easier to stop a measure to protect reproductive rights that will be on the ballot in November.

“After decades of Republicans’ work to make Ohio a pro-life state, the Left intends to write abortion on demand into Ohio’s Constitution,” Rep. Brian Stewart, a leader of the push for Issue 1, wrote in a letter to colleagues in December. “If they succeed, all the work we accomplished by multiple Republican majorities will be undone.”

“Some people say this is all about abortion,” Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, said in May, in a video obtained by News 5. “Well, you know what? It’s 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”

LaRose, who for months had denied that Issue 1 was about abortion, added that the higher threshold for approval also would be useful down the road to combat other “dangerous plans” from “the left,” including raising the minimum wage and legalizing marijuana.

Power grab seen

Opponents of Issue 1 — a coalition of over 200 groups — call it a brazen power grab by the legislature that threatens Ohio’s democracy.

With state lawmakers entrenched in power in Columbus thanks to gerrymandered maps, opponents argue, the ballot initiative process is the last meaningful avenue left for ordinary Ohioans to effect change. Issue 1 would raise the costs both of the signature-gathering process, by making organizers hire canvassers in all 88 counties rather than just half, and of the campaign itself, by requiring that 60% of voters approve. The result would be to make ballot initiatives usable only by deep-pocketed special interests, opponents say.

And, they add, it would threaten the principle of one person, one vote by allowing just 40% of voters plus one to override the clear will of the people.

“Issue 1 would end majority rule as we know it,” Jen Miller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, told a raucous crowd at a July 20 rally for the “No” campaign at a union hall in Boardman, just outside Youngstown.

Opponents also accuse the GOP of trying to sneak the measure through by setting an Aug. 8 election date — a time when politics is the furthest thing from many voters’ minds — to depress voting rates, since lower turnout is often thought to help Republicans. In last year’s August primaries, turnout dropped to a meager 8%.

Still, the early signs suggest that turnout will be strong.

In the first 13 days of early voting, 231,800 Ohioans voted in person, according to numbers released July 28 by the secretary of state’s office. That’s a higher rate of votes per day than the 136,000 people who voted in person during the first nine days of early voting for last November’s high-profile and competitive U.S. Senate race.

However voters come down, other states will be watching closely.

From Arizona to the Dakotas to Florida, legislators are working to make it harder to get initiatives passed into law, or on the ballot at all. In doing so, they’re taking aim at a form of direct democracy that’s emerged in recent years as a favorite tool of advocates looking to enact popular policies — on issues from health care to the minimum wage to democracy reform — that elected politicians have failed to prioritize.

Sarah Walker, the policy and legal advocacy director for the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which works to support progressive ballot measures, said she views the push to restrict ballot initiatives as closely tied to higher-profile efforts, in some states, to tighten voting laws in what voter advocates have called suppression.

“It’s ultimately another step on the road towards authoritarianism and towards consolidated power,” said Walker. “And what happens in Ohio is going to shape … whether or not these attacks on direct democracy are going to continue.”

Ballot initiatives grow popular

Ballot initiatives have found themselves in state lawmakers’ crosshairs just as they’ve become a key method to subvert those lawmakers’ power.

A quarter-century ago, conservatives started using the initiative process — which exists in about half of all states — to make gains they were unable to achieve through legislation, on issues from voter ID to criminal justice to same-sex marriage.

In Ohio, a 2004 gay marriage ban put on the ballot by GOP lawmakers — reportedly at the urging of top White House political strategist Karl Rove — was credited with super-charging conservative turnout, helping President George W. Bush win the state, and with it, reelection.

But after Republicans took full control of a slew of state governments in 2010, the shoe switched to the other foot.

Shut out of state capitols, progressives in many states poured resources into the ballot initiative process, which they’ve used throughout the last decade — including in deep-red states like Utah, Idaho, Kansas, and Arkansas — to expand access to Medicaid, protect abortion rights, boost the minimum wage, establish paid sick leave, reform the redistricting process, liberalize voting rules, legalize marijuana and more.

In some states where Republican legislators have little fear of losing their majorities, the ballot initiative process has become their opponents’ most significant check on lawmakers’ power.

The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center counts 76 state bills introduced this year that would make the initiative process harder to use — often by creating tougher signature requirements or by raising the threshold for approval, the two methods used by Issue 1.

Last fall, Arizona voters approved two measures, both backed by the legislature, that restricted the initiative process. Voters rejected a third, further-reaching measure that would have rendered the process all but moot by letting lawmakers amend or repeal initiatives already passed by voters.

Arkansas this year raised the number of counties where initiative supporters must gather signatures from 15 to 50. North Dakota voters will weigh in on a measure next year that would amend the constitution by raising the threshold for initiatives to 60%.

And in 2020, Florida imposed tougher signature-gathering requirements for the initiative process — a response in part to the passage in 2018 of a measure re-enfranchising people with past convictions, which the legislature had already weakened via legislation.

Some of these efforts have failed. South Dakota voters in June 2022 rejected a bid by the legislature to raise the threshold for ballot measures to 60% — which one top lawmaker acknowledged was aimed at foiling a measure on the November ballot to expand Medicaid. (The Medicaid expansion ultimately passed with 56% of the vote.)

And in Missouri, legislation that would have required ballot initiatives to gain 57% approval passed the House but died in the Senate in May. Republicans, who control state government, have vowed to try again next year. As in Ohio, lawmakers have said they want to stop an abortion rights measure, which could be on the 2024 ballot in the state.

“There is a common thread between all these efforts,” Elena Nunez, the director of state operations at Common Cause, told reporters. “They are responses to people using the ballot measure process to address the important issues of the day — things like economic justice, democracy and voting rights, and reproductive health.”

Nunez added: “We are seeing states where the legislature is not only not doing that —?they are taking efforts to make sure that the people themselves can’t do it either.”

Abortion access?

Ohio’s Issue 1 popped up because of one reason: abortion.

When swing states started enshrining abortion access into their constitutions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down Roe v. Wade, Ohio reproductive-rights groups jumped on board. They organized a November ballot measure to do the same for their state.

In May, the Republicans who control the Ohio Statehouse responded by passing a joint resolution to put their own measure, Issue 1, on the ballot. As legislators voted, hundreds of protestors, including law enforcement, union workers and nurses, demonstrated outside the chambers.

The resolution called for an August special election, meaning that if Issue 1 passed, the abortion rights measure in November would need to win 60% of the vote.

That threshold could well be the difference between victory and defeat. Of the six abortion-rights ballot measures to have been held since Roe was struck down, four — those in Kentucky, Montana, Michigan, and Missouri — have passed with between 52 and 59 percent of the vote. Only in deep-blue Vermont and California did they win over 60%.

But there was one problem with lawmakers’ plan. Back in December, they had passed a bill to eliminate the vast majority of August special elections, which have an abysmal turnout rate and cost $20 million. A coalition of Issue 1 opponents filed a lawsuit in the Ohio Supreme Court challenging the August special election date, citing the recent change in law. In 1897, they noted, the Ohio Supreme Court stated that the legislature couldn’t amend statutes by passing joint resolutions.

The court’s Republican majority allowed the election to move forward, finding that the legislature could override itself to set an election date.

Proponents of Issue 1 say they want to stop wealthy special interests from coming into the state. But the effort is being bankrolled in part by Richard Uihlein — an out-of-state billionaire and a major supporter of groups that helped organize the rally on Jan. 6, 2021 that led to the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — who gave over $4 million to a pro-Issue-1 PAC Protect Our Constitution.

Newly filed campaign finance documents reveal that the PAC has raised about $4.8 million. Uihlein’s donations have been 82% of the group’s total support. But out-of-state interests aren’t just funding the vote yes side.

One Person One Vote, the anti-Issue 1 PAC, has raised more than $14.8 million, according to the filings. The largest lump sum was $1.8 million from the Tides Foundation, a progressive social advocacy charity based in California. In total, 83% of the funds raised by the vote no campaign have also been from out-of-state interests. However, these include national organizations that have chapters in Ohio, like the National Education Association.

Some of the ads run by Issue 1 supporters have been called misleading. One declares: “Out-of-state special interests that put trans ideology in classrooms and encourage sex-changes for kids are hiding behind slick ads.” Neither the abortion-rights measure nor any other potential Ohio ballot measure in the works relates to trans issues.

LaRose, too, has received criticism for campaigning energetically for Issue 1 while being responsible for overseeing the vote in an unbiased way as the state’s top elections official. In July, he also announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate, in a competitive Republican primary.

“We don’t expect, especially this close to the election, for the secretary of state to be out there as the chief cheerleader of Issue 1,” Catherine Turcer of Common Cause Ohio told News 5 recently.

A spokesperson for LaRose did not respond to a request for comment at that time.

Polling favors opponents

A Suffolk University/USA Today poll released July 20 found that 57% of registered Ohio voters oppose Issue 1, while 26% support it, with 17% undecided.

That has some Issue 1 opponents talking about triumphing by a margin large enough to make a statement to the legislature.

“I don’t want to just win this, I want to win this big,” Jaladah Aslam, an organizer with the Ohio Unity Coalition, a civil rights group, told the crowd at the Boardman rally. “I want to send a message to them to stop messing with us.”

Getting the resounding victory they want will depend on how effectively Issue 1’s opponents can mobilize their voters. By July 28, the campaign said it had knocked on over 63,000 doors and participated in more than 15,000 conversations since May.

“Overwhelmingly, folks who know about the issue are excited to vote no or they’ve already voted no,” said Tatiana Rodzos, an organizer for Ohio Citizen Action, a progressive group playing a leading role in the “No” effort.

As he went door-to-door on a recent afternoon in Westlake, a Cleveland suburb, Mike Todd found plenty of potential voters who didn’t know about the election.

“It’s kind of voter education,” said Todd, the field director for OCA. “Making sure folks are aware that there’s even an election going on in August.”

States Newsroom and News 5 followed as Todd went door-to-door on a recent afternoon in Westlake, a Cleveland suburb. Plenty of potential voters said they didn’t know much about the election.

At each door, Todd introduced himself and described the measure as a threat to majority rule that would take power away from regular Ohioans and give it to politicians. Most people promised to study the literature he left and consider the issue.

Playing a key role in the “No” campaign are progressive organizations who may look to use the initiative process to advance their issues. That means not only reproductive-rights groups, but also workers’-rights advocates pushing to raise the minimum wage, anti-gerrymandering activists who want to reform redistricting, and more.

One Fair Wage is collecting signatures for a possible 2024 ballot measure that would boost Ohio’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, from the current $10.10, by 2026. On a recent afternoon, Barry Goldberg, a canvasser for the group, was asking for signatures on a busy shopping street in Cleveland Heights, a small city just outside Cleveland.

If passers-by agreed to sign — and most registered Ohio voters did — Goldberg would then tell them about the election for Issue 1, explaining that it would make it harder to pass initiatives like the minimum-wage measure. He asked them to write their contact information on a separate sheet so that organizers could get them to the polls.

Goldberg said the current rules make it challenging enough to gather the signatures needed to get an issue on the ballot through the initiative process. In the 44 counties required, organizers must get signatures from registered voters numbering at least 5% of the county’s total vote in the last gubernatorial election.

Having to gather signatures in all 88 counties?

“That would kill nearly every ballot initiative before it started,” Goldberg said. “All it would take is someone with a million dollars who didn’t like a bill to just dump money into a handful of counties, and do everything they can to make it harder to get signatures. Something could be wildly popular, and still not even get (on the ballot).”

Making change difficult?

But Issue 1 supporters say trying to change the state’s founding documents should be difficult.

“If a constitutional issue is significant enough to impact all 11.8 million Ohioans, then it should have to garner and demonstrate broad statewide backing for consideration,” the Ohio Restaurant Association and other business groups who oppose a minimum-wage hike said in a May statement backing Issue 1.

Cirino, the Republican senator, agrees.

“The U.S. Constitution has very stiff requirements in order to make amendments,” he said. “The founding fathers designed it that way, so that the Constitution could not be changed on a willy-nilly basis.”

“Yes” campaign leaders have mostly tried to publicly downplay the role of abortion in the effort. But it wasn’t hard to find Ohioans who cited the issue to explain their support for Issue 1.

“The driving force for us to be here was the abortion issue,” said Bob Dlugos, a local voter who stopped in to the Lake County GOP headquarters with his wife to pick up a lawn sign. “I do not want abortion to go up to the date of birth,” said Dlugos. “So that 60% vote is crucial.”

In fact, the proposed abortion-rights ballot measure would allow for abortion to be banned “after fetal viability,” unless a pregnant patient’s life or health were at risk.

But Cirino said passing Issue 1 would have a positive impact beyond abortion.

“Minimum wage, recreational marijuana — there will be other things,” he said. “If organizations realize that they can easily get into the Ohio Constitution with a 50%-plus-one majority, they’re going to be flocking to the state of Ohio to get things done that way.”

And Cirino suggested that making direct democracy too easy undermines the whole idea of representative government.

“Legislators — we are all elected by the people,” he said. “We speak for the people. We are up for election every two years in the House, in the Senate every four years.

“So that gives the people an opportunity to express their views to the legislators,” Cirino continued. “And then we can act accordingly, in their best interests.”

But Issue 1 opponents say that because lawmakers have used the redistricting process to ensure they’ll stay in power, that system isn’t working.

“We’re living under gerrymandered maps,” Mia Lewis, the associate director of Common Cause Ohio, told reporters recently. “There’s super-majorities in both chambers … one party controls the Ohio Supreme Court, and all statewide elected positions. But it’s not enough. They actually want to take away the citizens’ last meaningful way to have their voices heard.”

Turnout

Although polling has favored vote no, and so has the sharp increase in absentee ballots, this election will most likely come down to one thing: voter turnout.

When it comes to Republicans, state data shows they went out to vote twice the amount as Democrats in the 2022 primary. This provides some comfort for Cirino. But Rodzos says he is in for a shock.

“It’s just really motivating to think that supporters of Issue 1, they don’t see that we can do this — but we’re going to do it,” the vote no advocate said. “The energy is there, the excitement is there and the anger is there.”

Until Aug. 8, advocates will continue knocking.

Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron speaks at the Kentucky Farm Bureau Measure-the-Candidate forum. (Screenshot from KFB feed)

Values was the word of the day as Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron addressed a crowd of Kentucky Farm Bureau board members and employees in its Measure-the-Candidate forum.?

He pitched himself as a politician who embodies rural ideas and criticized the absence of his opponent in the gubernatorial race, incumbent Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear.?

“Of course, he will show up at the Ham Breakfast here in a few weeks, and he’ll lecture you on your values and tell you what his values are and try to bully you into thinking that your position in values should be different,” said Cameron, referring to an upcoming annual Kentucky State Fair event. “But I hope that you recognize that is not the way in which I operate, and I stand firmly with your values. I respect your values.”?

Beshear’s campaign did not specify why the governor didn’t attend.

Ahead of the forum, Cameron began his criticism of Beshear in a Tuesday statement, saying not going shows he “has turned his back on Kentucky’s farm families” and adding that it shouldn’t be surprising because “he’s been silent in the face of Joe Biden’s assault on them for years,” referring to inflation and regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency.?

Cameron has joined other attorneys general in pushing back against new EPA regulations, including leading a coalition of Republican state attorneys general to oppose policy that would cut vehicle tailpipe emissions.?

In response to Cameron’s criticism, Beshear campaign spokesman Alex Floyd said that Beshear “is proud of his record delivering record-setting economic growth for our rural communities and standing up to support Kentucky farmers, especially in the aftermath of devastating natural disasters,” a nod to recent flooding in Eastern Kentucky and tornadoes in Western Kentucky, both areas with rural communities.?

The Kentucky Farm Bureau, an insurance company that represents 462,000 Kentucky families and businesses, has regularly held its Measure-the-Candidate forum to have politicians discuss agriculture and farm issues. In 2019, during his first gubernatorial campaign, Beshear participated opposite former Republican Gov. Matt Bevin.?

On Wednesday, attendees asked Cameron about taxes on agriculture products and how he envisioned state agricultural dollars being used. In response, Cameron said he would work with the legislature on those policy decisions. Throughout his talk, he reiterated many of the same policy points that he’s laid out on the campaign trail, including support of work requirements for able-bodied individuals that receive Medicaid and eliminating the state income tax.?

During the Republican primary election, Cameron attended several debates and forums held with other candidates, but not all. Most notably, Kentucky Sports Radio host Matt Jones said the attorney general initially accepted but later backed out of the KSR debate.?

After a campaign stop in Shelbyville earlier this month, Beshear told reporters that he’s “certainly willing to participate in debates,” but had not received invitations yet.?

“But listen, a debate is when you have to talk about what you’re for, not who you’re against,” Beshear added.?

Both Beshear and Cameron, as well as their respective running mates, Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman and state Sen. Robby Mills, have agreed to appear at the Fancy Farm Picnic next week in Fancy Farm, a community in Graves County. The annual West Kentucky political spectacle is known for fiery candidate speeches and country fair flair as locals make heaps of barbecue all day long.Recently released polls on Kentucky’s governor race shows Cameron trailing Beshear by between 4 to 10 percentage points.

Kentuckians could no longer use one form of photo ID at the polls without also filing an affidavit under a bill that the Senate approved Tuesday. It now goes to the House. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

In recent years, U.S. politics has been consumed by partisan fights over states’ election policies.

But a new study by two political scientists is causing a stir by finding that state legislators’ changes to election laws — both those that tighten election rules in the name of integrity, and those that loosen rules to expand access — have almost no impact on which side wins.

“Contemporary election reforms that are purported to increase or decrease turnout tend to have negligible effects on election outcomes,” write the authors, Justin Grimmer and Eitan Hersh, political scientists at Stanford University and Tufts University, respectively, in “How Election Rules Affect Who Wins,” which was published online as a working paper June 29.

These laws, the authors write, “have small effects on outcomes because they tend to target small shares of the electorate, have a small effect on turnout, and/or affect voters who are relatively balanced in their partisanship.”

That doesn’t mean these laws don’t matter. Many advocates, as well as the authors themselves, say there are plenty of reasons beyond partisanship to care about voting policy — not least the effect some can have on non-white voters.

“If we can take the temperature down on some of these issues and separate the partisan consequences from some of the other consequences, the public discussion would actually be a lot better,” Hersh said in a phone interview. “Right now, it seems like one of the reasons this stuff is toxic is because every minor thing, from having mail voting to having voter ID, is treated as some democracy-ending reform. And I think that’s quite dangerous.”

Indeed, Grimmer and Hersh’s conclusion, which is largely supported by other recent research, is at odds with the behavior of much of the political and advocacy worlds.

In recent years, the parties and outside groups have poured countless dollars and hours into the battles over voting, seeking to gain an electoral edge, stop their opponents from getting one, or fight voter suppression. Now, some are asking: What does the emerging consensus that these laws have minimal effects on election outcomes mean for that ongoing work?

Elections bill in House?

The study appears just as a heated debate is flaring again in Congress over the partisan and racial impact of recent voting laws.

On July 10, at a U.S. House Administration Committee field hearing in Atlanta, Republican lawmakers unveiled the American Confidence in Elections Act, new legislation that would tighten voting rules in numerous ways.

To make the case for the measure, the GOPers repeatedly criticized Democrats for predicting that Georgia’s 2021 election law, which imposed stricter rules on several types of voting, would suppress votes, especially among minorities. (“The left lied,” declared a GOP video on the issue that was shown at the hearing.)

Republicans noted that the state’s turnout in fact went up last year — though Democrats countered that Black turnout had gone down relative to white turnout.

Grimmer, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, served as an expert witness for Georgia in its defense of the law after the state was sued by the U.S. Department of Justice and voting-rights groups.

Meanwhile, some in the trenches of the voting wars reject the new study’s conclusions out of hand.

“Republicans are targeting the rules of voting because they know they matter,” said the Democratic super-lawyer Marc Elias — who filed the first lawsuit against the Georgia measure — in a statement to States Newsroom. “Studies of cherry-picked practices from years and decades ago may be interesting to some political scientists but they don’t solve the problem of armed vigilantes at drop boxes or states changing laws to make voter registration more difficult.”

As the conventional wisdom has it, laws that restrict access tend to help Republicans, since those most likely to be blocked or deterred by stricter rules — often racial minorities, students, renters and low-income Americans — lean Democratic. And laws that make voting easier, the idea goes, tend to boost Democrats, since the people likely to be helped by them similarly lean Democratic.

Indeed, Republican-led states have lined up to pass restrictive new voting laws, while fighting Democratic efforts to pass expansive laws. Democrats have done the reverse — including raising hundreds of millions of dollars to file court challenges to the GOP’s measures. And at election time, both sides have mobilized vast armies of volunteers to hunt for fraud, or protect voting rights, at the polls.

Politicians have been quick to blame election rules for defeats. Hillary Clinton has said, with little evidence, that between 27,000 and 200,000 Wisconsin voters “were turned away from the polls” in the 2016 presidential election because of the state’s ID requirement. Former President Donald Trump has gone much further, frequently blaming his 2020 loss on loose voting rules that, he falsely claims, enable fraud.

Advocates and much of the media have likewise prioritized the issue, seeing a chance to hold powerful actors accountable, protect or expand access to the political process, or spotlight a set of urgent challenges to U.S. democracy.

But Grimmer and Hersh describe this Sturm und Drang — at least the part that’s focused on partisan outcomes — as a tempest in a teapot.

“The caustic rhetoric that suggests the partisan stakes for election administration reform are very high is detached from empirical reality,” Grimmer and Hersh write. “Even very close elections are decided by margins larger than the magnitude of election reforms we examine in this paper.”

Little evidence of impact on results

Though that finding may surprise political operatives, advocates, and journalists, academic experts say it’s very much in sync with existing research on the issue — making the Grimmer-Hersh study much harder to dismiss as an outlier.

Scholars have struggled to find evidence that changes like early voting and election-day registration have significantly boosted turnout. (One possible exception is mail voting, where at least one recent study did find significant effects, while others didn’t.)

Nor have most studies found that even very controversial restrictive measures do much to lower voting rates. A 2019 paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that strict voter ID laws “are unlikely to have a meaningful impact on turnout or election outcomes.” And a paper published this year by two Notre Dame political scientists found that ID laws “motivate and mobilize supporters of both parties, ultimately mitigating their anticipated effects on election results.”

The Grimmer-Hersh study tries to clarify why the partisan effects are so negligible. Unlike most earlier studies, it doesn’t look only at one type of law — voter ID laws, for example — but rather on the entire category of election laws that might affect turnout, including both those that make voting harder and those that make it easier.

The authors give an example of a hypothetical law that imposes additional requirements for voting, targeting Democratic-leaning groups.

The requirements target 4% of the electorate, and cause a 3 percentage-point decline in turnout among this group — figures that the authors say are consistent with the effects of real laws. The result would be a 0.12 percentage point drop in overall turnout.

That’s already small, but because that group is likely to be around 60% Democratic, not 100%, the swing toward Republicans would be even smaller, just 0.011 percentage points. Only the very closest elections in history would be affected by a swing that tiny.

Even laws that contain several prongs that affect voting in different ways are still likely to affect results only in the very tightest elections, the authors write. North Carolina’s omnibus elections bill currently moving through the legislature there is an example, though it isn’t mentioned in the study.

In one section that may raise the hackles of voting-rights advocates, the authors note that there has been no significant turnout decline in the mostly Southern states that were affected by the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which removed the requirement for those states to have their election changes pre-approved by the federal government, to ensure they don’t hurt minority voting. In fact, they say, voting rates among non-whites have increased since the ruling.

Advocates and journalists —?including this one! — have poured resources into documenting the slew of restrictive new rules, from voter ID laws to reductions in polling sites, that were imposed in the wake of Shelby, at times painting the onslaught as an urgent crisis of democracy.

Even far-reaching structural reforms that go beyond targeted measures like voter ID may not do much to affect election outcomes, the paper suggests.

Many predicted that the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which has added millions to the rolls by requiring motor vehicles departments and other state agencies to offer registration, would help Democrats, the authors note. (“Who wins under this bill?” asked Rep. Spencer Bachus, an Alabama Republican, during the debate over the measure. The law, he answered, “will result in the registration of millions of welfare recipients, illegal aliens, and taxpayer-funded entitlement recipients. They’ll win.”)

In fact, the authors write, the law had essentially no partisan impact.

‘Beyond the voting wars’

Still, some critics note that many high-profile elections these days, including presidential elections, are decided by razor-thin margins. In both of the last two presidential elections, the winner won three pivotal states by 1.2 percentage points or less — in 2020, it was 0.7 percentage points or less. (And that’s leaving aside Florida 2000, a unicorn event that was so close that almost everything made a difference.)

“[U]sing the Hersh-Grimmer framework, some of these laws would’ve had a plausible chance of swinging the 2016 presidential election because the election was so close,” said Jacob Grumbach, a professor of political science at the University of Washington, via email. “ I could understand people might think that’s a big deal.”

Hersh acknowledged it’s possible that a multi-pronged law, or a set of laws acting together, could cause a swing that big. But he argued that because of the high level of uncertainty involved in the analysis, there’s no reliable way to predict what the partisan effects of a given law will be.

“Yeah, collectively these small policies could aggregate,” Hersh said. “But no one knows how they aggregate. Even the ones that liberals call suppression.”

“There’s no way lawmakers can sit around and be like, ‘OK, we’re going to do these six things and this is going to help Democrats or Republicans,’ and actually know what they’re talking about,” Hersh added.

The authors also acknowledge more than once that there are plenty of valid reasons to worry about election policies that have nothing to do with results —? “such as whether they make voting convenient, more secure, more cost effective, and whether they are motivated by discriminatory intent.” All of those effects would be important to pay attention to, even if they didn’t have a partisan impact.

In fact, both Grimmer and Hersh stressed in interviews that one goal of the paper was to encourage a focus on these other issues by making questions of partisanship recede.

?”States should be seeking out policies that they think will improve the functioning of elections,” said Grimmer. “And they can be comforted knowing that when they make those changes, it’s not going to end up with wild swings in partisan balance.”

Others see a different take-away from the paper.

David Nickerson, a political science professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, was involved in a project that looked at the impact of stadium voting, which took place in the 2020 election at over 48 professional sports stadiums as a convenience measure during the pandemic. Nickerson said project organizers hoped that when they showed stadium voting has no partisan effect, Republican officials would drop their opposition to it.

But that didn’t happen, Nickerson said. The experience suggests to him that differences over how elections should be run — and in particular over how easy or hard voting should be — are as much about ideological principle as they are about political advantage.

“You’ll even hear Republicans openly say they think voting should be harder, and you should only vote if you really want to and care and are committed — which I can’t imagine a Democratic official saying,” Nickerson said. “It’s a different worldview.”

Michael Morse, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, said the study should lead advocates to focus relatively less on laws that affect the individual voting experience, like most voter ID laws, and more on structural issues, like getting more people on the voter rolls, or stopping gerrymandering.

“We have a limited amount of resources for reform,” Morse said. “The agenda for reform should be informed by this type of empirical political science.”

Indeed, the reality that election laws barely affect results is a good thing for building bipartisan coalitions for voting rights, Morse added.

“I would like the public discussion of these issues to be less partisan,” he said. “It’s the only way forward beyond the voting wars.”

The U.S. Supreme Court released a new ethics code on Monday, Nov. 13, 2023 but Sen. Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the new rules “fall short of what we could and should expect when a Supreme Court issues a code of conduct.” (Al Drago/Getty Images)

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected North Carolina Republican legislators’ argument that the state courts cannot review laws legislatures pass governing federal elections.

Republican legislators claimed the Elections Clause in the U.S. Constitution makes legislatures the sole state authorities on federal elections law,? including congressional redistricting.

Critics said the high court’s endorsement of the independent state legislature theory would cause chaos with state elections, with states trying to enforce a set of rules for state elections and another set for federal elections. The case drew national attention because of its potential to disrupt election laws around the country.

In a 6-3 opinion, the nation’s high court rejected Republicans’ argument, known as the independent state legislature theory.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion. Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Sam Alito dissented. Thomas wrote that the case was moot because the NC Supreme Court has already decided the question that brought Republican legislators to the US Supreme Court.

“We are asked to decide whether the Elections Clause carves out an exception to this basic principle,” said the majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts.? “We hold that it does not. The Elections Clause does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review.”

Democrats from former President Barack Obama to Democratic leaders in the North Carolina legislature weighed in with statements supporting the decision.

“Today, the Supreme Court rejected the fringe independent state legislature theory that threatened to upend our democracy and dismantle our system of checks and balances,” Obama said on Twitter.

The opinion affirms the February 2022 decision by the Democratic majority on the NC Supreme Court that congressional districts the Republican majority created were extreme party gerrymanders that required revision.

“The Supreme Court rejected the independent state legislature theory with vigor,” said Neal Katyal, the attorney who represented the non-government defendants in court. “The court adopted the arguments made by my client, Common Cause, in every material respect.”? Katyal answered reporters’ questions at an online news conference Tuesday afternoon.

“I think it’s incredibly important that legislatures have the traditional check and balance that our Founders put on them, which means subject to state courts, subject to state constitutions. State legislatures, after all,? are creations of the state constitutions. The idea that they can act independently of them is really far-fetched and would do grave damage to our constitutional structure.”

Common Cause, the NC League of Conservation Voters, and a group of voters supported by the National Redistricting Foundation were defendants in the case. They sued Republican legislators in state court over gerrymandered districts, which ultimately led to the Republicans’ appeal to the US Supreme Court.

“We beat back the most serious legal threat our democracy has ever faced with today’s ruling in Moore v. Harper,” said Kathay Feng, vice president for programs at Common Cause. “Today’s ruling is a major victory for our rights as Americans to have a government that values every person’s voice and vote.”

In a statement, House Speaker Tim Moore said he was proud of the work he did to bring the case to the nation’s highest court.

Despite today’s opinion, North Carolina Republicans can redraw election districts without concern that state courts will consider claims of partisan gerrymandering.

Before the US Supreme Court could rule, North Carolina Republican legislators petitioned for and received the chance to reargue a redistricting decision the state Supreme Court issued in December that said the Senate districts used for the 2022 elections were unconstitutional.

The court majority in April overturned partisan gerrymandering opinions handed down last year by a Democratic court majority. The Republican-majority opinion said redistricting is the legislature’s job and the courts cannot not judge partisanship.

“Fortunately, the current Supreme Court of North Carolina has rectified bad precedent from the previous majority, affirming the state constitutional authority of the NC General Assembly,” Moore said in his statement.

Roberts wrote that courts “may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review,” but did not say whether the NC Supreme Court had overstepped.

“We decline to address whether the North Carolina Supreme Court strayed beyond the limits derived from the Elections Clause,” the opinion said. “The legislative defendants did not meaningfully present the issue in their petition for certiorari or in their briefing, nor did they press the matter at oral argument.”

When pressed during December’s oral arguments whether the state’s Democratic justices has misinterpreted the state constitution, the Republicans’ lawyer “reiterated that such an argument was ‘not our position in this Court.’”

Lawyers on both sides of the case tried to use the historical record dating back to the founding of the country to bolster their arguments.

Roberts’ opinion said that history supports judicial review.

“State cases, debates at the Convention, and writings defending the Constitution all advanced the concept of judicial review. And in the years immediately following ratification, courts grew assured of their power to void laws incompatible with constitutional provisions,” he wrote.

During oral arguments last year,? Thomas, Alito, and? Gorsuch indicated they supported the Republican legislators’ argument, while Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan challenged their logic and interpretation of history.

The NC League 0f Conservation Voters, one of the parties fighting partisan redistricting and the independent state legislature theory, praised the US Supreme Court decision, but called the state Supreme Court decision “blatantly partisan.”

The US Supreme Court twice asked case participants this year if the state Supreme Court rehearing the gerrymandering case and later, siding with Republican legislators made the federal case moot.

The lawyer representing Republican legislators said the Supreme Court should decide the federal case even though North Carolina’s highest court had given them a victory.

Republicans found agreement from Common Cause, which sued over the redistricting plans and opposed Republicans’ position on the independent state legislature theory. Common Cause wants the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the question because it will keep coming up, its May letter said.

Most of the parties who opposed state Republicans’ position, including the US Solicitor General, told the court the case was moot.

Attorneys for a group of voters who sued over the Republican redistricting plans said in a? recent letter to the Court that since the state Supreme Court had ruled in Republicans’ favor, Republicans no longer had standing and there is nothing more that they could win. Likewise, a lawyer for the NC League of Conservation Voters wrote the case is moot.

Katyal chided lawyers who were Common Cause’s side in court who went on to tell the Court this year that the case was moot.

Randall Weddle, then a candidate for London mayor, listens as Gov. Andy Beshear helps celebrate the opening of WB Transport's new warehouse in April 2022. (Screenshot with permission of WYMT)

Editor’s note: This story was updated Thursday afternoon with more information.

FRANKFORT – The office of Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron has asked the FBI to investigate circumstances surrounding controversial political contributions made to the reelection campaign of Gov. Andy Beshear and the Kentucky Democratic Party last December.

On Tuesday, Beshear’s campaign manager?announced that the campaign?and Democratic Party had refunded $202,000 in contributions that the Beshear campaign had determined were in excess of legal limits as to how much a donor can give.

The Beshear campaign and the Democratic Party originally accepted the donations as legal ones within contribution limits made by numerous people who are relatives of London Mayor Randall Weddle or employees of a company co-founded by Weddle.

But the campaign later discovered that the $202,000 actually was all charged to a credit card belonging to Weddle and his wife, Victoria, and decided to refund those donations.

Intentionally making a political contribution in excess of the limits is a crime. State law limits the amount anyone can give to a campaign for governor to $2,100 per election. The limit on how much anyone can give to a state political party is $15,000 per year.

In response to questions about whether it would investigate the matter, Cameron’s office said late Tuesday only that it was considering its options.

On Thursday, however, Cameron’s office sent a letter to the FBI asking that it conduct an investigation.

That letter, written by Deputy Attorney General Victor Maddox, said: “Please accept this letter as a formal request by the Kentucky Office of the Attorney General for the FBI to investigate the circumstances surrounding contributions in the amount of some $202,000 to the gubernatorial campaign of Andy Beshear. These contributions have been the subject of widespread coverage in statewide news outlets. The contributions were ostensibly made by numerous members of the family of London, Kentucky Mayor Randall Weddle and employees of a company he co-founded, but apparently were charged by Mayor Weddle to his personal credit card.”

Maddox stated in the letter that Cameron’s attorney general’s office could not conduct the investigation. The office, he wrote “is barred at present from investigating this matter due to controlling ethics opinions.”

Maddox was apparently referring to an opinion of the Kentucky Executive Branch Ethics Commission a few years ago that effectively said that one executive branch official could not investigate another executive branch official if the two officials were facing each other in an election campaign.

Cameron is the Republican nominee for governor in November’s election running against the Democratic nominee, Beshear.

The request from the Attorney General’s Office was sent to the FBI’s Louisville Field Office. The Louisville FBI office did not immediately reply to an email from Kentucky Lantern asking if it would grant the request.

During his weekly press conference, reporters asked Beshear about the donations and the letter to the FBI. The governor said in all of his elections, he has “advised and required that my campaign follow the letter and spirit of every campaign finance law” and to address all situations with transparency and working with regulators.

“My understanding is that the campaign has met each of those requirements, worked directly with KREF (Kentucky Registry of Election Finance), explaining everything they knew about the situation, and worked to remedy it, again, directly with the regulator,” Beshear said. “That is an open transparent way of trying to do what’s right.”

Weddle did not return a phone message left Thursday at the London mayor’s office.

Questions about the large number of relatives of Weddle relatives and friends who made large contributions to the Beshear campaign and Democratic Party were?first reported by Kentucky Lantern?on April 17.

That report focused on at least $305,000 in donations to Beshear’s campaign and the Kentucky Democratic Party from family members and friends of Weddle.

The bundle of contributions was far larger than those given by traditional large donors to Beshear political causes such as Churchill Downs or the law firm Morgan & Morgan. Moreover, unlike other big donors, none of the Weddle donors had ever before made a big political contribution.

The so-called “bundling” of contributions from members of the same family or business is common – and it’s legal so long as the donor listed as making the contribution voluntarily contributed his or her own money.

Weddle, a Republican, told the Lantern earlier this year he was aware that many family members had donated to Beshear, but insisted he played no role in helping organize or raise those contributions.

Beshear’s campaign manager Eric Hyers declined to be interviewed for that Lantern report. He did respond by email to a list of questions. But his general response ignored questions about the Weddle contributions and other unusual contributions.

“With his steady leadership during difficult times as well as his work fostering a strong economy that is creating tens of thousands of jobs and attracting record private sector investments, we understand generally why many people want to support Governor Beshear,” Hyers said in his response.

After the Lantern published its report, Beshear and his campaign insisted there was no problem with its contributions.

“All of those have been voluntary,” Beshear said of the contributions. “And nothing has or ever will be promised for any type of donation.”

But on Tuesday, Hyers put out a stunning statement that said $190,000 in contributions to the Kentucky Democratic Party and $12,000 in contributions to the Beshear campaign had been refunded because that money had been donated by Randall Weddle’s credit card. Hyers said it was Randall Weddle himself who came forward to tell the campaign that the contributions were made on his credit card. Hyers said the campaign immediately reported the matter to KREF which advised making the refunds.

Since then, some Republicans have linked the Weddle contributions to a $1.4 million grant that the City of London received earlier this year from the Beshear administration to help repair sidewalks in downtown London. But a statement from the Transportation Cabinet last month said there is no such connection because the grant recipients are determined by the cabinet staff using specific criteria for that grant program.

McKenna Horsley contributed to this report.

(Getty Images)

Kentucky will remain with the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, for a year while reviewing possible alternatives to support voter rolls maintenance, Secretary of State Michael Adams said Wednesday.?

Recently, seven Republican-led states have left ERIC, an interstate compact for sharing voter registration data. Some former members like Virginia and Texas plan to create their own data-sharing networks, but a new interstate partnership could be a major challenge, requiring significant time and resources.?

To leave ERIC without a backup plan would be “irresponsible,” Adams said. On the other hand, staying in ERIC would be “equally irresponsible.”

While Kentucky stays in ERIC for the next year, barring it disbands before then, Adams plans to look at alternatives, consider possible statutory changes and confer with other secretaries of state.?

“I will work in good faith with officials in both political parties, here in Kentucky and federally, and if I remain in Office for the 2024 General Assembly, I will work with legislators of both political parties to develop other ways to continue the progress we have made in cleaning up our rolls,” Adams said.?

Adams, a Republican, is seeking a second term in office. He said in his tenure, approximately 330,000 voters have been purged from voter rolls with assistance from Kentucky’s ERIC membership. Through the system, the state has received information about voters who moved out of state and re-registered elsewhere or voters who died after moving out-of-state.?

Because nearly a quarter of ERIC’s members have left or are planning to leave, annual dues will increase, Adams said. Another issue for Kentucky is that only one neighboring state is left in the compact, and interstate relocation to and from Kentucky typically involves its neighbors, “Kentucky is about to pay a lot more money to get a lot less information.”?

A recent court filing by Adams said Kentucky’s dues this year are $40,039 and are projected to increase to $58,797, or, if Texas leaves as expected, $65,115.?

Adams said he asked the judge who presided over Judicial Watch’s 2017 lawsuit against former Democratic Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes if Kentucky is obligated to remain in ERIC. The federal judge ordered Grimes to clean up voter rolls in compliance with the National Voter Registration Act.?

Part of the settlement included Kentucky stepping up compliance efforts, which included joining ERIC in 2019, Adams said.?

Adams said he will not remove Kentucky from ERIC if the court does not allow it. If the departure is permitted, Kentucky will need time to review alternatives to getting necessary voter information for maintaining roles, the cost of alternatives and if legislative action is needed.?

The U.S. Department of Justice, which intervened in the Judicial Watch case, has offered assistance in reviewing alternatives, Adams continued. He also said “receipt of information from federal agencies like the U.S. Postal Service and the Social Security Administration would greatly help.”

“Prior to last year, ERIC was not controversial,” Adams said. “Unfortunately, like any effort at bipartisanship in recent history, it has come under attack. I have consistently defended ERIC against falsehoods about its funding and operations, even risking my re-nomination for this Office to do so. ERIC has helped Kentucky comply with the law and conduct fair elections. While my administration will never cave to conspiracy theorists, it nevertheless is true that the value of ERIC to us going forward is a debatable question.”

Voters sit in polling booths to cast their vote on Tuesday, May 16, 2023, at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Lexington. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Abbey Cutrer)

This year’s state legislative sessions are almost all wrapped up. And on voting and elections policy, the headlines have largely focused on a new wave of restrictive voting laws passed in big Republican-led states like Florida, Texas, and Ohio, as well as expansive laws approved in Democratic-led states like Michigan, Minnesota, and New York.

But another development has flown under the radar — one that may be equally revealing about the priorities driving those in charge of voting policy in many states.

Eight states — Tennessee, West Virginia, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Hawaii, Arkansas, Indiana, and Alabama —? had turnout rates of below 50 percent when averaged between? the last two national elections.

Yet these states did almost nothing this year to boost turnout, according to an analysis by States Newsroom of new election laws and policies (though one, Hawaii, did make meaningful reforms in previous sessions). In fact, several moved in the opposite direction, imposing new restrictions that are likely only to make voting harder.

How Kentucky fares

• Kentucky’s voter turnout averaged 54.8% in the last two general elections. (The turnout to vote for president in 2020 was 64.8%. In 2022, it was 44.8%.)?
• Kentucky ranked 39th among states on the “cost of voting” index.
• Only four states have fewer early voting days than Kentucky’s three days — and those four states have none. (Kentucky allows “no-excuse” in-person absentee voting the Thursday, Friday and Saturday before an election.)

The three days of early voting were added in 2021 by Kentucky’s Republican legislature, which also ?allowed counties to establish voting centers where any registered voter in each county can cast a ballot.

Michon Lindstrom, communications director for Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, said: “Turnout has not increased in the elections held since our administration persuaded the legislature to quadruple the number of voting days. Although we are proud to have increased voting convenience, we do not believe the number of voting days is a primary driver of voter turnout. As your article notes, Tennessee rates 50^th of 50 in turnout, yet Tennessee has two weeks of early voting, compared to three days of early voting in Kentucky.”

Because these eight states are mostly small or mid-size, and none are swing states — Hawaii is deep blue, while the rest are solidly red — their voting policies tend to attract less national attention than their larger and more competitive counterparts.

But they’re home to around 32 million people. And, by settling for feeble voting rates, they weaken U.S. democracy writ large.

Turnout rates matter for the health of a democracy, because the higher the rate of voting, the more closely the result reflects the will of the people, and the more legitimacy it carries. That’s especially true because turnout rates vary by age, race, income level, and more.

The findings highlight how inaction can be as powerful as active voter suppression. Policymakers in some of these states don’t recognize their low turnout rates as a problem: Top election officials in several have said encouraging voting isn’t their job.

U.S. turnout lags

American democracy has a turnout problem, experts on elections warn.

In the 2020 election, almost two-thirds of eligible voters cast a ballot — the highest rate in decades. Yet that still ranked the U.S. 31st out of 50 developed countries examined in a 2022 Pew Research Center study of turnout among the voting-age population — well behind places with far less robust democratic traditions like Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil, Hungary, and Slovenia.

U.S. midterm elections have even lower voting rates. In 2022, just 46% of eligible voters turned out. And that was higher than all but one previous midterm this century.

Plenty of factors affect turnout, from the appeal of the choices on the ballot to the effectiveness of the campaigns at mobilizing their backers. But broadly speaking, states with more voter-friendly rules tend to see higher turnout than states with more restrictive rules.

In 2022, Oregon, which made voting easier than any other state that year, according to a well-regarded ranking system, had the highest turnout in the country — more than twice that of Tennessee, which ranked 38th on ease of voting.

Six of the eight states with the lowest voting rates in the States Newsroom analysis ranked 35th or lower on ease of voting as measured by a cost of voting index.

This correlation between ease of voting and turnout gives lawmakers and election officials from states with low turnout rates a clear path to starting to fix the problem: Make voting easier.

But a close look at what those eight lowest-performing states did this year shows that — with perhaps one exception — easing voting is not the path they’re pursuing.

Tennessee:?

Average turnout in last two elections: 45.4% (50th out of 50)

Ease of Voting Ranking: 38th out of 50

After a midterm election in which turnout dropped to just 31.3% — less than 1 in 3 eligible voters — the Volunteer State passed two elections bills this year, neither of which is likely to significantly affect turnout. In addition, lawmakers introduced several restrictive measures, including one, quickly withdrawn, that would have eliminated early voting in the state.

The office of Secretary of State Tre Hargett, a Republican, said it has partnered with businesses, sports teams, chambers of commerce and non-profit organizations to promote voting. It also runs outreach programs encouraging eligible high-school and college students to register to vote.

Julia Bruck, a Hargett spokesperson, attributed Tennessee’s low voting rates to a lack of competitive races.

“Competitive races drive turnout, not the referees,” Bruck said via email. “Tennessee has not seen as many competitive statewide races.”

Asked why Tennessee’s turnout lags even other states with a lack of competitive races, Bruck did not respond.

West Virginia

Average turnout in last two elections: 46.2% (49th out of 50)

Ease of Voting Ranking: 19th out of 50

The Mountaineer State passed only one elections bill this session, which isn’t likely to have a major impact on turnout. The League of Women Voters of West Virginia wrote in a February letter to lawmakers that the state’s rules present “many barriers,” and called for increased access.

“The legislature has offered no such improvements,” the group added.

West Virginia joined several other GOP-led states in withdrawing from the Electronic Registration Information Center, an interstate compact for sharing voter data, after right-wing activists accused the group, without evidence, of partisan bias. Experts have said that leaving ERIC will make it harder to maintain accurate voter rolls.

Secretary of State Mac Warner, a Republican, doesn’t appear in a hurry to boost voting in the state. Testifying before Congress in April, Warner said West Virginia has “perhaps the best balance” in the country between election access and election security, and called for an end to the federal requirement that state motor vehicle departments offer voter registration — the single most popular way for new voters to register.

In a separate appearance, Warner said it’s not his job to increase turnout. “That is a candidate, party or campaign’s job, to get out the voters,” he argued. “It’s my job to run a free, fair and clean election.”

Warner’s office did not respond to a request for comment on any efforts to increase turnout.

Mississippi

Average turnout in last two elections: 46.4% (48th out of 50)

Ease of Voting Ranking: 49th out of 50

The Magnolia State passed three elections bills this year, two of which had the effect of further restricting access (the third will likely have little impact on turnout). One makes it easier for election officials to remove voters from the rolls, while the other outlaws “ballot harvesting,” in which third parties, often local community organizations, collect absentee ballots from voters and mail or bring them to election offices. Voter advocacy groups have said the ban, which is being challenged by the ACLU as a violation of the Voting Rights Act, will make it harder for elderly voters and those with disabilities, among others, to cast a ballot.

After turnout in last year’s June primaries sank to just 11%, Secretary of State Michael Watson, a Republican, called the number “discouraging,” and led registration drives at high school and college football games and other venues.

Watson’s office did not respond to a request for comment about additional ways to boost turnout.

Oklahoma

Average turnout in last two elections: 47.7% (47th out of 50)

Ease of Voting Ranking: 35th out of 50

The Sooner State passed five elections bills this session. None appear likely to have a major impact on turnout, but one suggests an aversion to efforts to expand access: It makes it much harder for Oklahoma to join ERIC or any other interstate compact that, like ERIC, requires outreach to eligible but unregistered voters — a key factor in the decisions of some other red states to leave ERIC.

Another new law requires the state to obtain death records from the Social Security Administration, in order to identify registered voters who may have died, then work with local election officials to potentially remove them from the rolls.

Oklahoma’s Board of Elections didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on efforts to boost turnout.

Hawaii

Average turnout in last two elections: 48.2% (46th out of 50)

Ease of Voting Ranking: 4th out of 50

The Aloha State passed only one elections bill this session, which isn’t likely to significantly affect turnout.

But Hawaii stands out from most of the other low-performing states, because in recent years it has implemented reforms, giving it an extremely voter-friendly system today. In 2019, it switched to universal mail elections, and in 2021 it passed automatic voter registration. It also offers same-day registration, in which voters can register at the polls.

Though Hawaii’s 2020 turnout rate of 55.2% was the lowest in the nation, the state also saw the biggest turnout increase compared to the previous presidential election, when turnout was just 42.5%.

That suggests the new mail-balloting system has the potential to lead to significant improvements over time. Automatic voter registration, too, has helped boost turnout in other states, but it has generally taken at least one cycle to have an impact.

Still, some election officials don’t sound eager to help with the turnaround. The chief elections administrator for Honolulu County, where over two-thirds of Hawaiians live, has said, as paraphrased by a local columnist, that “it is not up to government to inspire people to vote.”

“People vote because they are motivated or optimistic, or they are passionate about the issues or the candidates,” the administrator, Rex Quidilla, said last year.

Arkansas

Average turnout in last two elections: 48.7% (45th out of 50)

Ease of Voting Ranking: 48th out of 50

Arkansas passed 16 elections bills this session. And yet, despite the state’s third-from-botttom ranking on turnout, not one aimed to significantly expand access. In fact, taken together, they’re likely to make voting even harder.

One measure creates a criminal penalty for election officials who mail voters unsolicited absentee ballots or absentee ballot applications — something state law already barred them from doing. Another creates an “Election Integrity Unit” to investigate election crimes, and a third bans the use of drop-boxes to vote.

Still another amends the state constitution to require the secretary of state to do more to remove ineligible voters from the rolls, including creating a system to verify citizenship. And a fifth expands a ban on accepting money from outside groups to help run elections. That was an issue taken up by Republicans nationally after funds provided by an organization financed in part with a one-time donation in 2020 by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg played a key role in ensuring that the 2020 elections ran smoothly despite the covid-19 pandemic.

Secretary of State John Thurston, a Republican, has suggested that expanding access isn’t a top priority. “You have to take ownership of your vote,” he said last year. “We do want it to be convenient, but hard to cheat. Accuracy is more important than convenience.”

Thurston’s office did not respond to a request for comment on efforts to increase turnout.

Indiana

Average turnout in last two elections: 49.1% (44th out of 50)

Ease of Voting Ranking: 36th out of 50

The Hoosier State passed two significant elections bills this year, both of which could further limit voting. One makes it harder for local governments to adopt their own election reforms without state approval — it comes after cities across the country have found innovative ways to expand voting access. The other affects the ability to vote more directly: It bars the mailing of unsolicited mail ballot applications, and requires voters requesting a mail ballot to submit additional identifying information.

Secretary of State Diego Morales, a Republican, campaigned on his support for a slew of new voting restrictions, but has backed off most of them since taking office in January.

Morales spokesperson Lindsey Eaton said via email that the secretary of state has sought and received special funding from the legislature for voter outreach, and has also provisionally received a federal grant to be used in part for voter outreach.

The office is also working with the Indiana Broadcasters Association on a public information campaign to promote voting. And Morales has announced plans to conduct voter outreach at county fairs in all 92 counties in the state.

“As the first Latino elected to a statewide office in Indiana, increasing voter turnout across the state remains a top priority for Secretary Morales,” Eaton said.

Alabama

Average turnout in last two elections: 49.8% (43rd out of 50)

Ease of Voting Ranking: 45th out of 50

The Yellowhammer State’s legislature adjourned in early June without passing any elections bills. A measure that Democrats and civil rights groups called voter suppression passed the state House but unexpectedly did not receive a vote in the Senate. The bill would have made it a crime to help a voter with an absentee ballot, though it contained exceptions for family members and some others.

Like Warner in West Virginia, Secretary of State Wes Allen, a Republican who has denied the 2020 election results, rejects the idea that he should encourage voting. Allen withdrew Alabama from ERIC on his first day in office, and explained that he did so in part because ERIC requires states to contact eligible but unregistered voters and urge them to register.

“Our job is to help give (local election staff and law enforcement) the resources they need to make sure our elections are run in the most safe, secure, and transparent way possible,” Allen said soon afterward. “Our job is not to turn people out. That is the job of the candidates — to make people excited to go to the polls.”

Allen’s office did not respond to a request for comment about efforts to increase turnout.

Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, right, shakes hands with supporters during a June 13 campaign stop. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

SHEPHERDSVILLE — Republican Daniel Cameron’s stump speech Tuesday in Shepherdsville hit familiar themes — his Christian faith, conservative values, criticism of his rival, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear.?

But there was one big departure — the attorney general did not highlight his endorsement from former President Donald Trump, who was set to appear in a Miami courtroom almost two hours later.

The campaign stop, which had a packed room at The Fish House Bar & Grill in Shepherdsville, was one of several the attorney general has made since winning the Republican nomination for governor. Last week, he went to Elizabethtown, Bowling Green and Owensboro.?

“If you all don’t take anything else from what I say today, I want to be painstakingly clear on one thing: We will retire Andy Beshear from the governor’s office,” Cameron said to cheers from the room.

Cameron bested 11 other candidates in a crowded Republican gubernatorial primary with 48% of the vote about a month ago. Throughout the long primary season, he repeatedly brought attention to Trump’s support of his candidacy. Trump endorsed Cameron early on in the race. The former president is facing felony charges after he was accused of illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. He pleaded not guilty Tuesday afternoon.

When asked about his reaction to the latest indictment by reporters, Cameron said he is focusing on the general election and defeating Beshear.?

“I continue to say that Kentuckians have concerns about the weaponization of government power,” Cameron said. “And we’ve talked a lot about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, but there’s been no indictments there. And so I think a lot of Kentuckians have concerns about whether there are two different justice systems depending on who you are.”

His response mirrored his statement reported by the Lexington Herald-Leader and the Louisville Courier-Journal last week after news of the indictment broke.?

Cameron also talked about education during his stop, saying Beshear’s approach has been “hostile to the teachers of Kentucky.” Cameron then referred to comments from Education Commissioner Jason Glass saying that teachers should follow their school districts’ policies when addressing transgender students as part of their employment. The issue has become a Republican talking point both among gubernatorial candidates and in the state legislature.?

Around 100 supporters attended Cameron’s Tuesday stop, which was in Bullitt County and about 30 minutes from downtown Louisville. The restaurant was packed with Republican voters, law enforcement officials, members of the General Assembly and local government leaders, including Bullitt County Judge-Executive Jerry Summers, who introduced Cameron.?

Danny and Sherrie Oldham, who are from Spencer County, attended the event because they wanted to display their support for the attorney general. They said he was their pick during the primary election. After Cameron addressed the crowd, they said they liked what he said about abortion and issues with Beshear.?

“We need a true leader, somebody who’s going to stand up to the far-left and bring us back to where we need to be,” Sherrie said. “The last three years, we have gotten way off the path.”?

Cameron told reporters Tuesday that he is still deciding on a running mate. Kentucky state law allows candidates for governor to designate their lieutenant governor pick by the second Tuesday in August, which is Aug. 8 this year.

The general election is expected to be expensive. Another round of campaign finance reports are due within the next few days. According to Medium Buying, the Beshear campaign has spent $1.61 million on TV and radio ads. DGA-affiliated Defending Bluegrass Values has spent $1.33 million and Pro-Beshear PAC Preserve, Protect and Defend has spent $47,000. Republican Governors Association’s State Solutions has spent $419,000 on TV and radio ads.?

In his final remarks to the crowd, Cameron turned his attention toward November and encouraged volunteering with his campaign or spreading the word to others.?

“There are 21 weeks essentially left in this race for governor,” he said. “I want you all to put it all on the line.”?

Greg Elkins, surrounded by family, friends and colleagues, is sworn in Thursday as the new senator representing Bath, Clark, Menifee and Montgomery Counties and an eastern portion of Fayette County. (Photo by LRC Public Information)

Sen. Greg Elkins, a Republican from Winchester who recently won a special election, was sworn into the Kentucky Senate on Thursday.?

Elkins, will fill a vacancy left by former Sen. Ralph Alvarado, who became the Tennessee Department of Public Health commissioner in January. The term ends in 2026.

The seat represents the 28th state Senate District, which covers Bath, Clark, Montgomery, Menifee and part of Fayette counties.?

Elkins’ wife, Kim, and their friends and family joined them for his for his swearing-in ceremony, a Senate Majority press release said. Senate Republicans, including Senate President Robert Stivers and other members of leadership, also attended. Elkins was sworn in by Supreme Court of Kentucky Justice Robert Conley.?

“Senator Elkins brings great business acumen and the entire Senate Majority Caucus is excited to work with him,” Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, said in a statement. “He arrives in the legislature at a great time, just before the 2023 Interim Period, which allows him to get his feet wet as the joint committees do their work ahead of the 2024 60-day budget session. I am particularly pleased to welcome Greg as we both represent a portion of Fayette County. Additionally, his win returns the Senate GOP supermajority to its high-water mark of 31 members.”??

With Elkins, the Republicans’ majority in the Senate stands at 31 members to seven Democrats.?

During the interim session, Elkins will serve on the Interim Joint Committees on Health Services, Families and Children, State Government and Local Government. His standing committee assignments will be announced before the 2024 legislative session begins.?

“Few people are fortunate enough to call themselves Americans and Kentuckians, and even fewer are blessed to be a representative for their fellow residents. I take this responsibility seriously and know my constituents trust me to represent them well,” Elkins said in a statement. “With the support of friends here in the Kentucky General Assembly, I’m confident we will continue moving Kentucky in the right direction.”?

Attorney General Daniel Cameron, the Republican nominee for governor, speaks at a press conference with other statewide GOP candidates. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

FRANKFORT — Daniel Cameron, who won about 48% of the votes during a heated Republican gubernatorial primary, told reporters Friday that he is still mulling who will be his future running mate.?

Cameron, leading a slate of Republican nominees for statewide offices, appeared with the group at the party’s headquarters in Frankfort.?

“Starting the process of making a judgment about who that individual will be,” the current attorney general said.?

State law now allows candidates for governor to designate their lieutenant governor pick by the second Tuesday in August. For the 2023 election cycle, that date is Aug. 8.?

Some have suggested that another Republican primary gubernatorial candidate, Ryan Quarles, could be a worthy pick for Cameron. The agriculture commissioner received about 22% of the vote, unofficial election results show. He came in second Tuesday night.?

Quarles’ campaign was largely focused on building connections with rural Kentuckians and local officials. His endorsements included more than 230 from elected Republicans across the state.?

Quarles told reporters Tuesday evening after the results came in that Cameron had not asked him to be his running mate.?

Stephen Voss, a political science professor from the University of Kentucky, said the top criteria for a good running mate is that they address something the candidate doesn’t have.

“The problem is figuring out which traits or variables you want to counterbalance, right?” he said. “So, the candidate who would help counterbalance in terms of policy might be different from the candidate who helps counterbalance in terms of gender.”?

Voters do not typically vote for the running mate, but for the top of the ticket, making the electoral impact small, said Scott Jennings, a conservative commentator who has worked in Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s past campaigns. In Kentucky, lieutenant governors typically have few duties as well, but they could potentially step into the governor’s role.?

“If I were choosing a running mate, I would choose someone who I was comfortable that (they) could step in and execute the duties of the office of governor. And if they could help me politically a little bit on the margins, that’s a bonus,” Jennings said. “But I think what you’re looking for here is somebody that you trust, that shares your vision and that, if something happens, you can have a seamless transition.

Incumbent Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who is Cameron’s general election opponent, has indicated that he will run again with Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman.?

As primary dust settles, attacks begin to fly

A pro-Beshear PAC, backed by the Democratic Governors Association, has already launched a website called camerondoesntcare.com, which criticizes Cameron on a number of issues, chiefly among them not appointing a special prosecutor to review pardons issued by former Republican Gov. Matt Bevin.?

Another DGA PAC, Defending Bluegrass Values, has placed a TV ad against Cameron on the same issue.?

In his final days in office, Bevin issued a flurry of pardons and commuted sentences of convicted criminals, drawing criticism in Frankfort and from victims’ families. Cameron later asked the FBI to investigate the pardons.?

When asked about a response from reporters, Cameron turned to criticize Beshear for commuting the sentences of more than 1,000 prisoners early in the coronavirus pandemic and cited a report that found about a third of them had since been charged with a new felony. The report did not indicate the outcomes of those charges, the Courier Journal reported.

“At the end of the day, this race is going to be about me and Andy Beshear, and Andy Beshear is the ‘catch-and-release candidate,’” Cameron said.?

Republican slate displays unity

Cameron appeared with other Republican nominees, including Secretary of State Michael Adams, who is running for re-election, and Treasurer Allison Ball, who is running for auditor. They all talked about the unity of Kentucky Republicans. The primary gubernatorial race got a bit heated with attack ads and debate sparring.?

Also joining them were Republican House Speaker David Osborne and Senate President Robert Stivers, who said internal polling shows a generic Republican beating Beshear in a hypothetical general election.?

In January, independent polling firm Mason-Dixon showed Beshear winning against Cameron by nine percentage points. The primary election saw a limited number of public polls.?

“When you look at a little over six months, you’re going to see everyone behind me being the people who are up the streets, occupying offices,” Stivers said.?

Randall Weddle, mayor of London, Kentucky, speaking at Gov. Andy Beshear's press conference on May 18. (Screen grab from Gov. Andy Beshear's YouTube Channel)

FRANKFORT – London Mayor Randall Weddle, whose family and associates contributed more than $300,000 to the Kentucky Democratic Party and Gov. Andy Beshear’s re-election campaign, traveled to the State Capitol on Thursday to join Beshear in announcing a nearly $1.4 million grant to the City of London to pay for new sidewalks along Main Street in the city’s downtown.

The grant was one of five Transportation Alternative Program grants totaling $4.8 million announced by Beshear at his weekly press conference.

Beshear and Weddle were not asked about the massive bundle of political contributions during Thursday’s press conference.

The two officials said the grant pays for a needed improvement of pedestrian safety and convenience along a busy nine-block stretch of Main Street.

“This is tremendous for our community and we’re grateful for your administration,” said Weddle, who posed with Beshear for a photograph of the presentation of a giant ceremonial check.

Last month, Kentucky Lantern reported that Weddle’s family and employees of a company he co-founded have contributed at least $305,000 to the Kentucky Democratic Party and the Beshear re-election campaign since late 2021 – by far the largest bundle of contributions from any group of related donors to the Beshear political committees in that period.

Weddle, a registered Republican, himself did not contribute. But his wife gave $32,000, his son gave $17,000, his daughter $16,500, his mother $7,000, his mother-in-law $7,000, a sister $17,000, another sister $15,000. Other relatives also gave, as did many others associated with WB Transport, a freight-hauling company in London co-founded by Weddle.

None of the 19 donors in the Weddle/WB Transport group had ever before made a large political contribution, according to records of the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance and the Federal Election Commission.

Since the flow of contributions from the Weddle/WB Transport group began in late 2021, Beshear spoke at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of a 200,000-square-foot warehouse of WB Transport in April of 2022, and in June of 2022, Beshear appointed Weddle to the Kentucky Transportation Center Advisory Board. The Kentucky Transportation Center website says it is an organization housed on the University of Kentucky campus that conducts multidisciplinary transportation research and has a strong working relationship with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.

Weddle did not return a phone message left for him early Friday at the Mayor’s office.

Beshear has repeatedly said that contributions have no effect on his decisions as governor. Soon after Kentucky Lantern’s story was published last month he said, “We’ve had support from Democrats and Republicans, thousands and thousands and thousands of people across Kentucky and across the United States. But all of those have been voluntary, and nothing has or ever will be promised for any type of donation.”

On Friday the administration replied to Kentucky Lantern’s questions with data and a statement from the Transportation Cabinet about the Transportation Alternative Program (TAP) with the data showing that 36 such grants totaling about $24 million have been awarded since Beshear became governor.

But in response to a question about the grant following the contributions, Sean Southard, spokesman for the Republican Party of Kentucky released a statement that said, “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Andy Beshear and Joe Biden. It’s deeply concerning to see Andy Beshear engaging in the Biden-Beshear family tradition of influence peddling.”

The statement from the Transportation Cabinet said localities in Kentucky compete for these federally funded TAP grants and that recipients are chosen by the Transportation Cabinet staff. The staff makes its decisions, according to the cabinet, based on “factors like federal program eligibility, overall project cost, if funding will help complete an existing TAP project, and potential conflicts with planned state highway projects.”

The grants reimburse a local government for 80% of the cost of a local project that improves “non-motorized forms of transportation,” the cabinet said. The grants are commonly used for building sidewalks and bike trails.

Beshear said Thursday that the area getting new sidewalks in London includes London Elementary School, city hall, the county courthouse, a community center, three churches and many businesses.

Other grants announced by Beshear on Thursday: $2,318,400 to Scott County; $576,000 to Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government; $376,609 to City of Greensburg; and $170,554 to Boyle County.

The $305,000 in contributions from the 19 people with family and/or business ties to Weddle is just part of about $700,000 donated to the Kentucky Democratic Party and the Beshear campaign in the past 18 months from new Kentucky donors who — like those affiliated with WB Transport — work in the reverse logistics industry.

“Reverse logistics” is a term applied to the processes — repairing, shipping, warehousing, reselling, etc. — that follow merchandise after it has been returned by customers to the retailer. These processes have a goal of retaining as much value as possible for resale by wholesale, liquidation, or “pallet sales” stores.

The state ethics commission for Kentucky’s executive branch has fined former Democratic Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes $10,000 for ethics violations over the improper use of voter data that the commission states gave a benefit to herself and others.

The Kentucky Executive Branch Ethics Commission in its order Friday said the former chief election official “used her position and influence to improperly download and distribute voter lists without following the processes of government.”

“Her actions conferred a benefit and advantage on herself and others, circumvented the process of government and were in conflict with and in derogation of the public interest,” a press release from the commission stated.

The ethics agency initiated the proceeding over the violations in 2021 after beginning to investigate Grimes for potential violations in 2017. Grimes served as Secretary of State from 2012 to January of 2020.

In the order, the ethics agency detailed how Grimes used her position to direct subordinates to store data from the state’s voter registration system onto flash drives for a “personal, private purpose” in violation of the law and also directed subordinates to download and distribute customized voter lists free of charge.

The commission also refuted arguments from Grimes that the statute of limitations had expired for the ethics commission to take action and that the commission did not prove that Grimes “knowingly” violated the law when she believed she was acting legally.

“As Secretary of State, Respondent would know the requirements of the law she administered. It would be disingenuous and incredible to suggest that she did not,” the order stated. “Respondent had to know she was providing information to which the recipients were not entitled.”

In a statement, an attorney representing Grimes said she would appeal the commission’s order.

“After investigating former Secretary Grimes for half a decade, the Executive Branch Ethics Commission chose not to hold a hearing in this matter or present its own evidence,” said Jon Salomon, Grimes’ attorney. “Secretary Grimes believes that the Commission was required to dismiss its complaint in full – and will be seeking review of the Commission’s decision by the Franklin Circuit Court.”

The Kentucky Senate on Tuesday approved a bill ending one form of voter identification. (Getty Images)

The primary election in Kentucky is Tuesday, May 16. Statewide, voters will choose party nominees for the general election.?

On Tuesday polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. local time. Kentucky is split between Eastern and Central Daylight time zones.?

Most voters’ ballots will only have elections for constitutional officers: governor,?attorney general, secretary of state, agriculture commissioner, treasurer and auditor.?

No one has officially filed for the office of lieutenant governor as Kentucky gubernatorial candidates must select a running mate to join their ticket. Those selections must be made by the second Tuesday in August.?

A state Senate seat will be decided by voters in Bath, Clark, Menifee, Montgomery and part of Fayette counties. The special election, which has three candidates, will fill an unexpired term in District 28. The seat became open after Dr. Ralph Alvarado, a Republican, became Tennessee’s health commissioner.?

Any voter who is in line by 6 p.m. will be allowed to cast a ballot. Kentucky does not have same-day registration. But if you registered to vote 29 days before the election and your name is not on the precinct roster, you may request a provisional ballot.

Proof of identification is required to vote in Kentucky. Accepted forms are a drivers license, college ID, military ID or another ID issued by the state or a county or city that has the voter’s name and photograph. More details about voters’ rights can be found on the State Board of Elections website.

Mail-in absentee ballots must be received by the local county clerk before 6 p.m. on Election Day.?

Voters may report suspected election law violations and voting irregularities to the Attorney General’s Office via its Election Fraud Hotline. The hotline will be staffed on Tuesday from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. The number is 1-800-328-VOTE, or 1-800-328-8683.?The number of complaints logged by the hotline will be posted on the office’s website.?

For details about your local polling place, including an address, visit the State Board of Elections website and select your county. More information can be found at govote.ky.gov.?

Live election results will be available online from the State Board of Elections.?

To view a sample ballot, visit the Secretary of State’s website.

Daniel Cameron

Kentucky Republican candidate for governor Daniel Cameron released his plans for Kentucky’s education system if elected in November. They include raising starting pay for teachers and keeping “far-left” policies at bay.?

In a Wednesday press release, his campaign said his framework aims to “keep the far-left from indoctrinating our students” and that the attorney general “understands that our schools exist to prepare students to be productive citizens not incubators for progressive causes.”

?“Kentucky parents deserve the best possible education for their children,” Cameron said. “My framework puts parents, students, and teachers ahead of any ideology or radical influence. We have been told we need to make a choice between supporting our teachers and giving parents a say in their children’s education. That does not have to be the case, and, in my administration, that will end.”

Here’s the four points of Cameron’s framework:??

• “Defend Kentucky’s Values. I will end the teaching of Critical Race Theory and stop the Kentucky Department of Education from promoting any curriculum or policy that encourages the teaching of woke ideologies in our K-12 public-education system. Students should go to school to learn the skills necessary to be productive citizens, not to distrust or fear their classmates because of the color of their skin or to have identity politics forced on them.”
• “Raise Teacher Pay. In my first budget I will propose legislation that raises the starting-pay for teachers and ensures that no teacher’s salary is below the new starting-pay benchmark. I will also propose a bill giving a stipend to every teacher in Kentucky to help offset the personal expenses they incur purchasing school supplies.”
• “Reduce Bureaucracy. Burdensome paperwork and bureaucrats have made teachers’ jobs harder. In my Administration, I will work with educators and administrators to reduce this burden. Our teachers should be focused on teaching, not red tape.”
• “Keep Politics Out Of The Board Of Education. I will only appoint members to the Kentucky Board of Education who understand the needs of teachers, refuse to allow our students to be indoctrinated, and welcome parents’ involvement. I will not appoint members who favor bureaucracy and woke virtue-signaling over the success of our kids.”

Education has quickly become a topic in the gubernatorial election as 12 Republicans head to the May 16 primary.?

Another candidate, former United Nations Ambassador Kelly Craft said in early February she plans to dismantle the state board of education and Kentucky Department of Education and replace them “with people who empower parents and will make sure teachers teach the ABC’s not the CRT’s.”?

After Craft’s plans were announced, another Republican nomination seeker and Somerset Mayor Alan Keck said he wants “holistic solutions to the challenges (kids) face. I’ll also fight to ensure parents have a choice and a voice in the process.”?

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear has supported raises for teachers and school personnel in the past. During this legislative session, he has asked the General Assembly to support his Education First Plan in response to the teacher shortage and to address learning loss students experienced during the coronavirus pandemic. It calls for funding a 5% pay raise for all public school employees on top of some recent raises school districts allocated. Beshear also is proposing universal pre-K and social and mental health services.?

The Democratic Party of Kentucky released a statement Wednesday afternoon from Executive Director Sebastian Kitchen calling Cameron’s policy on increased teacher pay and a recent announcement from another Republican candidate, Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles, on support of medical marijuana “major planks of Governor Beshear’s agenda.”

This story has been updated with new information.?

(Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The full Democratic National Committee is set to vote in just days about a decision to ratify a new lineup of five states that would lead the nation in primary voting for Democratic presidential candidates in 2024.

But approval of the new calendar at a meeting scheduled for Feb. 4 in Philadelphia won’t be the last step in what’s become a contentious process.

Democrats in New Hampshire will still need to get their Republican-controlled state government to change a law that says the state must schedule its primary ahead of similar contests and to expand access to early voting — both of which GOP lawmakers have said they won’t do.

Georgia Democrats also will need to get their GOP secretary of state to change the state’s presidential primary date to match the DNC’s requirements — a similarly unlikely feat.

If the two states’ Democrats don’t, in fact, get Republicans to follow along with the DNC’s plan, waivers will become void, moving New Hampshire and Georgia back into the so-called regular window that begins in March.

The waivers allow the five states to vote before the regular window if those states implement the dates and policies the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee detailed during its December meeting.

New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan said Thursday that the “state law is very clear that we will go first.”

“There is a way for us to make sure that we are honoring all the values of the Democratic Party with New Hampshire going first,” Hassan said. “And it’s really important that the DNC develop a proposal that is actually one that all of the participants can meet.”

Time extended

The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which originally approved the new slate of early voting states in December, voted this week to give New Hampshire and Georgia through June 3 to show the national party that the states were moving to match the DNC’s vision.

Similar extensions weren’t necessary for South Carolina, Nevada, or Michigan, which have met the requirements to get the waiver, allowing the three states to vote early without incurring the wrath of the national party.

The Rules and Bylaws Committee, which is spearheading the process, is expected to meet again shortly after the new June 3 deadline, according to an individual familiar with the process who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

During that meeting, panel members are likely to discuss whether New Hampshire and Georgia have met the requirements needed to vote early, or if the waivers the full DNC will vote to approve next week have become void.

New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said Thursday the extension until June 3 is unlikely to change much.

“Well, I appreciate that they provided the extension. Sadly, I don’t think it’s going to make much difference because the Republican governor and the Republican legislative leadership have been very clear they don’t intend to make the changes that the DNC has requested,” Shaheen said.

“And I think it’s unfortunate for the DNC to put at risk Democratic elected officials in the state, because of those rules,” Shaheen added.

Waivers would become void

If New Hampshire Republicans don’t take steps during the next four months to match the proposed Feb. 13 primary election day and expand access to early voting, then the waiver the DNC is set to approve Feb. 4 would become void automatically.

That would mean New Hampshire no longer has the DNC’s approval to vote ahead of the regular window, which begins the first Tuesday in March.

If the state were to hold its Democratic presidential primary ahead of that benchmark, the DNC would bar Democratic presidential candidates from campaigning in the state, including placing their name on the ballot. The DNC would also strip New Hampshire Democrats of half of their delegates.

The same would be true for Georgia’s Feb. 20 waiver, though Peach State voters aren’t as tied to the “first-in-the-nation” primary distinction that New Hampshire has clung to for years.

Georgia voters tend to head to the primary polls a bit later in the process, casting their ballots on June 9 for the 2020 presidential primary, March 1 during the 2016 primaries and March 6 for the 2012 primary.

So if Georgia doesn’t complete the steps outlined in the waiver a DNC panel approved in December and extended this week, the state would likely just vote during the so-called regular window that begins the first Tuesday in March.

Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff said Thursday that his home state moving up in the presidential primary voting process would be beneficial, though he deferred to the secretary of state when asked if the additional time would move the needle.

“It would be great for Georgia and Georgia would benefit from being earlier in the process,” Ossoff said. “So we will see how the process plays out.”

Twelve Republicans are seeking to unseat the current occupant of the Kentucky Governor's Mansion. Eight of them will debate over Tuesday and Wednesday nights in Northern Kentucky. (Getty Images)

This article has been updated with new information.

FRANKFORT, KY – Gov. Andy Beshear’s re-election campaign on Tuesday reported raising $646,700 during the last quarter of 2022, bringing the total Beshear has raised to date to $5,180,200.

The campaign reported having a bit over $4.7 million of that on hand.

While the haul during the past three months is smaller than any of the previous four quarters that the incumbent Democrat has been raising money for re-election, it is still a significant sum that increases his big money lead over all Republicans running for governor.

On the Republican side, former United Nations Ambassador Kelly Craft had by far the strongest fundraising quarter. Her campaign reported $547,600 in receipts during the three months bringing her total raised for the campaign to $1.3 million. That’s the largest amount raised by any Republican so far in the gubernatorial primary.

But Craft also is the only candidate for governor from either party who has been spending big. Her report showed just over $1 million in expenses during the quarter including the first television ads aired by any candidate for governor so far.

Craft’s campaign reported having just $230,200 on hand.

Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s campaign raised $259,100 during the period, bringing the total raised by his campaign to $967,400. His campaign reported having $712,300 on hand.

Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles, who going into the quarter had raised the most money among the Republican candidates, reported raising little in the last three months – just $54,300. That brought the total his campaign has raised to $930,000.

But the Quarles campaign also reported little spending, leaving him with $874,600 on hand – more than any of his Republican rivals.

Beshear also is not expected to face a serious challenge in his bid to win the Democratic Party nomination in the May primary. So, his campaign can save its money while the many Republican contenders must spend their available resources during the primary race.

A review of the long list of more than 2,000 contributions to Beshear during the quarter shows that he received $21,500 from officials and employees of Norton Healthcare; $20,000 from officials of Freedom Senior Services, a Louisville based company that provides in-home health care services; and $16,500 from officials of Churchill Downs.

And as was true with his campaign’s previous reports, Beshear continues to draw scores of contributions from officials within his administration.

About one quarter of the contributors to Craft’s campaign during the quarter were from outside Kentucky with the largest share of that coming from contributors in Oklahoma where the energy company Alliance Coal, headed by her husband Joe Craft, is based.

Among those listed as giving the maximum $2,000 contribution to the Craft campaign during the period are: University of Kentucky football coach Mark Stoops; conservative political consultant Karl Rove, of Austin, Texas; and John Schnatter, the former chief executive of Papa Johns.

Here are the main numbers for three other Republican contenders whose campaigns filed reports on? Tuesday:

*Somerset Mayor Alan Keck, who entered the Republican primary for governor on Nov. 21, reported raising $204,800 in his first 40 days of fundraising. He reported having $171,900 on hand.

Keck report shows he raised most of his money from Somerset and nearby towns, but got 22 contributions totaling about $35,000 from donors from the St. Petersburg Florida area.

*Kentucky Auditor Mike Harmon reported raising just $3,779 during the period. His campaign reports having $26,000 on hand

*Eric Deters, of Northern Kentucky, reported raising just $4,800 during the three-month period and having $6, 143 on hand.

]]> https://www.criminaljusticepartners.com/2023/01/03/beshear-maintains-big-fundraising-lead-over-republican-rivals/feed/ 0 https://www.criminaljusticepartners.com/2022/12/30/near-record-high-numbers-of-young-people-voted-during-the-midterms/ https://www.criminaljusticepartners.com/2022/12/30/near-record-high-numbers-of-young-people-voted-during-the-midterms/#respond Fri, 30 Dec 2022 14:01:45 +0000 https://www.criminaljusticepartners.com/?p=1125

The Kentucky Senate on Tuesday approved a bill ending one form of voter identification. (Getty Images)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.?

The November 2022 midterms have come and gone, but there are still some potential lasting implications that could influence the next election season.

One is that young people, aged 18 to 29, had one of the highest voter turnouts in a midterm election in recent history, according to our early analysis.

Specifically, an estimated 27% of eligible voters in that age group turned out to the polls in 2022, according to research by my team at CIRCLE – a research group at Tufts University focused on youth civic engagement. This marks only the second time in the last 30 years that more than 1 in 4 voters under 30 voted in a midterm cycle. In 2018, approximately 31% of young people voted.

It was young people’s support for Democratic candidates, specifically, that led them to have a major impact on elections in key states this year. Their votes were influential or outright decisive in several close races won by Democrats, such as Nevada’s Senate election. The same was true in the Georgia Senate and Arizona gubernatorial races.

Voter turnout across all age groups tends to be significantly lower in midterm elections than in presidential elections.

Young people, though, have historically voted at even lower rates than older adults in general. This trend has begun to change, with double-digit increases in youth turnout between 2014 and 2018 and between 2016 and 2020.

As a scholar of young people’s participation in democracy, I think the youth vote in 2022 underscores much of what works to increase young people’s electoral participation.

More registration, more votes

For starters, there was higher youth voter registration in 2022 than in 2018 in many states, including Michigan, Nevada and Kansas. Young political and civic leaders and voters also connected to issues that affect their lives – like abortion rights – in this election.

These trends also highlight what could help lessen ongoing challenges to get more young people to vote. There are voting laws, for example, that make it easier to register and vote.

What happened in November 2022

The overall 27% youth turnout rate is only one part of the story.

This was the 10th election cycle in a row in which 18- to 29-year-olds supported Democratic House candidates by at least a 10-point margin, according to CIRCLE’s analysis of the Edison Research data.

This year, young voters preferred Democratic House candidates by a 28-point margin. Youth of color, young women and LGBTQ youth supported Democrats by an even wider margin.

Young voters’ preference at the polls was markedly different from that of other age groups. Nationally, voters ages 30 to 44 preferred House Democrats by only 4 percentage points, and voters over the age of 65 preferred House Republicans by more than 10 points.

Why did it happen

Many reporters have asked me and my colleagues who contributed to this article – including Alberto Medina, CIRCLE’s communications team lead, and Ruby Belle Booth, CIRCLE’s elections coordinator – why youth voter turnout dropped in 2022 below the 2018 levels.

Throughout 2022, there were some signs that youth participation in the midterms would be relatively strong, including the number of young people already registered to vote. However, in that same analysis, my colleagues and I found that voter registration among 18- and 19-year-olds was lagging compared to 2018.

Supporting these young people to vote remains an enduring challenge.

Many campaigns and organizations rely on the existing voter rolls and other lists of registered voters to conduct outreach, so they often miss these potential new voters. That’s compounded by another issue: Young people are less inclined than other voters to identify or register with a political party.

Politics is personal

Instead, many young people approach politics based on the issues they care about.

In 2018, for example, the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, which killed 17 people, led more young people to vote for candidates they felt would do more to curb gun violence.

A number of high-profile climate change protests in 2020 also appeared to boost youth voter turnout that year.

In 2020, many young voters focused on racial justice and the Black Lives Matter movement, following the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man. That spurred considerable political engagement, like participating in public protests, that connected to a major increase in youth voter turnout between 2016 and 2020.

In 2022, young people continued to push for change on issues they consider personal, like climate change, gun violence and racial justice.

And after the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, abortion rose to the top of young people’s issues of concern.

While nearly 3 in 4 young people said they favor legal abortion, both young people who are for and against abortion rights said this was a top issue for them.

Our analysis of exit poll data found that young voters were the only age group to cite abortion as their top reason for voting. Other groups of voters over 30 said that inflation was their top priority.

Implications for 2024 and beyond

Millions more young people born after 1996 will reach voting age by 2024. Their political power will only grow in the years to come, while those over the age of 65 will make up a declining share of the population and the electorate.

What that shift means for election results will depend on how political parties and other political and civic groups engage young people.

In recent years, most young people have voted for Democrats. This is a shift from just 20 years ago, when voters under 30 split their vote fairly evenly between Democrat and Republican candidates.

But Republicans lag behind Democrats when it comes to directly communicating with young people. Just less than 1 in 3 people aged 18 to 29 said they heard from the Republican Party or the Donald Trump campaign in the month before Election Day in 2020. Half of young people, conversely, said they heard from the Democratic Party or Joe Biden’s campaign.

There are other actions and policies that could get more people under 30 to the polls.

Preregistration, which allows young people to register to vote at age 16 so they’re ready to cast a ballot once they turn 18, can increase youth turnout, but it’s only available in 16 states. Other policies and efforts by election administrators to get more young people to vote can vary widely across states, leading to major differences in participation. In 2020, youth turnout varied from 32% in South Dakota to 67% in New Jersey.

Young people’s estimated 27% turnout rate in 2022 marks a near-record for an age group that has historically participated at lower rates in midterm elections. Whether this is a long-term trend or not will depend on whether communities and political groups implement the changes that research suggests can lead to sustained increases in youth voter turnout.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Protestors outside the U.S. Supreme Court as oral arguments were heard in a pivotal North Carolina case dealing with election law on Wednesday. (Photo by Kira Lerner for States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — North Carolina Republicans appeared to have at least three of the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative justices on their side Wednesday in a case that could determine the future of elections nationwide, and leave decisions about federal elections in the hands of state legislatures and beyond the reach of state courts.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in an appeal of a North Carolina Supreme Court ruling that threw out congressional districts drawn by the Republican-led legislature. The state’s high court decided in February that the redistricting plans constituted a partisan gerrymander that violated the state constitution.

North Carolina Republicans base their case on something called the “independent state legislature theory,” which holds that the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause makes legislatures the sole authority over federal elections.

“It is federal law alone that places substantive restrictions on state legislatures performing the task assigned them by the federal constitution,” said David H. Thompson, the lawyer representing the GOP legislators, during Wednesday’s arguments.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito seemed to agree with Thompson, indicating their belief that the federal Constitution is enough to protect voters and state constitutions shouldn’t play a role in election matters.

The oral arguments lasted almost three hours, twice as long as the court had scheduled, with multiple justices seeking clarifications on how Supreme Court precedent impacts this case and how the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted.

“Blast radius” of a ruling for GOP lawmakers highlighted?

Three attorneys — former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, former Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, and current Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar — argued on behalf of the respondent voters, voting rights groups, and the U.S. Department of Justice, who oppose the North Carolina Republicans’ theory.

The opponents, who brought the original gerrymandering lawsuits, say the North Carolina Republicans’ argument relies on a misinterpretation of the Constitution that ignores historical fact.

The court’s three liberal justices seemed to agree with the opponents. An endorsement of the North Carolina Republicans’ position would have far-reaching effects, said Justice Elena Kagan.

“This is a theory with big consequences,” she said. “It would say that if the legislature engages in the most extreme forms of gerrymandering, there is no state constitutional remedy for that, even if the courts think that that’s a violation of the Constitution. It would say that legislatures could enact all manner of restrictions on voting, get rid of all kinds of voter protections that the state Constitution in fact prohibits. It might allow the legislatures to insert themselves, to give themselves a role in the certification of elections and the way election results are calculated.”

She added that the North Carolina Republicans’ proposal “gets rid of the normal checks and balances on the way big governmental decisions are made in this country.”

Katyal, who represented the parties who originally sued over the redistricting plans, warned of the “blast radius” of a ruling in favor of North Carolina GOP legislators in which state lawmaking is unconstrained by a state constitution.

Outside the court on Wednesday, Katyal said that “the checks and balances laced into the Constitution forbid what these challengers are seeking.”

Allison Riggs, co-executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, told reporters outside the court that the North Carolina legislators’ position during the oral arguments was extreme compared to what they argued in their earlier briefings.

“What I take away from today’s argument is that legislative leadership in North Carolina still wants the North Carolina constitution to be a meaningless piece of paper,” she said.

Conservative attorneys voice concerns

Opponents of the independent state legislature theory have also gained support from conservative lawyers who disagree with it.

“I do not believe there is any support whatsoever in the constitutional text or in the history of the framing of the Constitution that would support the most aggressive version of the independent state legislature theory that the petitioners are arguing for,” J. Michael Luttig, a Reagan administration lawyer and former U.S. Appeals Court judge, said in a webinar Tuesday. Luttig is working with Common Cause, the League of Conservation Voters, and a group of voters backed by the National Redistricting Foundation to oppose the North Carolina Republicans’ arguments.

Though the immediate case at issue before the Supreme Court is about redistricting, North Carolina Republicans have clashed with Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein and the state Board of Elections over other issues that could be implicated by the court’s ruling, such as the deadline for accepting mail-in ballots.

A ruling for North Carolina Republicans would create a confusing, two-tiered election system, with different rules for federal and state elections, national associations representing cities, counties, and mayors argued in a friend of the court brief.

Other recent rulings, including a 2019 Supreme Court case from North Carolina, Rucho v. Common Cause, seemed to indicate acceptance of the notion that entities other than legislatures have a lawful role in creating election districts. In Rucho, the majority said it would not consider cases about partisan gerrymandering, calling those political questions “beyond the reach of the federal courts.” But the majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, also noted that state laws, state constitutions, and independent commissions could offer remedies to partisan gerrymandering.

In his live blog of the oral arguments, voting rights expert Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the divided Supreme Court appears to be “searching for a middle ground to hold that in really egregious cases state courts can violate the federal constitution when they apply state constitutions (or potentially to interpret state statutes) to limit a state legislature in regulating federal elections.”

Specifically, he said that the three justices who appear to be undecided on this case — Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh –— seem to be looking for a middle ground.

He said he doesn’t believe the court is ready to rule in line with the North Carolina Republicans’ view on the independent state legislative theory, but a partial ruling would still be problematic in allowing the federal government to inject itself into state election disputes.

Voting rights advocates and opponents of the independent state legislature theory remain fearful of what a ruling for North Carolina’s legislators, or even a partial one, could mean for the future of elections.

During a voting rights conference on Tuesday, Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg said that a ruling for North Carolina Republicans would “not be good for certainty in elections at a time when the system is under assault.”