Kentucky Republicans trying to pass a big elections reform bill. Here’s what it does.
Republicans in Frankfort are trying to carefully steer legislation that would expand voting access in Kentucky after what many hailed as a successful 2020 election with expanded voting options because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
House Bill 574, sponsored by three Republican lawmakers, which was advanced by a committee Thursday, doesn’t expand absentee and in-person voting as much as the temporary measures put in place for the pandemic, but it would make it easier to vote in a state with some of the most restrictive voting laws in the country.
“This bill is measured,” said Trey Grayson, a former Kentucky Secretary of State and lobbyist for the Kentucky County Clerk’s Association. “We knew that things were temporary, but they were well received.”
Instead of weeks of early voting, the bill only allows people to vote early for three days leading up to an election (down from four days in an earlier version of the bill). It would make the online portal to request a mail-in ballot permanent, but keeps existing restrictions on who can vote by mail. They’d have to request a ballot at least 14 days before the election instead of seven. Every county would have to have a drop box and they would be allowed to have “vote centers” where someone from any precinct can vote, as they had in 2020.
It also allows clerks to begin processing absentee ballots 14 days before the election, a process that helps get vote totals out quickly on Election Day (in states where clerks were not allowed to process ballots early, there was a so-called “blue shift” in the 2020 Presidential Election, much to the ire of some Republicans who saw Trump leading on Election Night).
“It’s mostly good stuff,” said Josh Douglas, an election law professor at the University of Kentucky. “I’d like the expansions to go further and there is some integrity stuff I think is harmful, but on balance I think it’s a pretty good bill.”
The integrity aspects of the bill are intended to appeal to Republicans, such as Secretary of State Michael Adams, who’s stated goal for his term is to “make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
Among the security measures are two big issues for Republicans — the removal of people who are dead or moved away from the voter rolls and the creation of a paper trail of ballots. The bill requires that all new voting systems purchased by clerks have a paper trail and it ensures that if someone registers to vote in a new local or state jurisdiction, that they are removed from their old jurisdiction within five days.
The bill would explicitly prevent what Republicans often call “ballot harvesting,” where a third party gathers absentee ballots and submits them in one batch to a voting center. It also requires someone who needs assistance at the polls to take an oath specifically stating the reason they need assistance.
One issue Douglas has is that the bill does not allow clerks to do signature cures (where they go through a process of contacting a voter if there’s an issue with a signature on the ballot) on ballots that arrive after Election Day. He said that omission could bring legal challenges because it would be treating valid mail-in ballots differently based on when they are received by the clerk.
The bill also includes specific language that says only the General Assembly may revise or suspend statutes pertaining to elections, after a push by U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, who is touring the country to push legislatures to pass election security bills. The legislature already passed a bill removing the governor and secretary of state’s ability to set the manner of an election.
Advocates for the bill are optimistic that the balance, plus the public’s approval of the way the election worked in 2020, will help get the bill through the legislature.
“If we don’t pass something, all of the laws will go back to what they were,” said Rep. Jennifer Decker, R-Wally, the bill’s sponsor. “So we tried to put in the bill things everyone agreed on.”
Still, the path to passage may be politically perilous. The General Assembly is heavily Republican and their base is on edge after months of being told (falsely) that the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.
Prominent Kentucky Republicans questioned the voting laws in some of the states former President Donald Trump lost even while touting Kentucky’s election process, which shared many similarities with those states. Attorney General Daniel Cameron joined a lawsuit challenging how Pennsylvania established the rules for its elections and Rep. Hal Rogers formally challenged the results in Pennsylvania and Arizona.
Already, during a debate on a resolution to form an election integrity task force, state Rep. McKenzie Cantrell, D-Louisville, was reprimanded by the Speaker of the House for asking who the resolution’s sponsor believed won the 2020 presidential election.
Democrats have little power to derail the bill — so little that there were no Democratic co-sponsors — but Cantrell said she supported the bill in committee Thursday, saying she felt the bill’s sponsors had done a very good job and that she had very few concerns.
Instead, the more challenging issue may be time and Republican members, particularly those in the Senate, who aren’t sold on passing a major election reform bill.
Sen. Julie Raque Adams filed a similar bill in the Senate (though it has some key differences, like undoing a law that stripped the secretary of state of power over the State Board of Elections). It has not yet been heard in committee.
“I think it’s a good bill,” Grayson said. “Obviously, there are a lot of elements to it and the likelihood of passing it is hard.”
This story was originally published February 25, 2021 at 10:25 AM.
