President Trump again targets mail-in voting. What might Kentucky do?
President Donald Trump upped the ante on his opposition to mail-in voting Monday morning when he posted that he would “lead a movement” to end the increasingly popular practice and crack down on the use of voting machines.
“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election,” Trump wrote on his social media site.
Trump also said he’d sign an executive order on the matter, but did not mention what would be included in that order.
Kentucky’s use of mail-in voting in elections has been lauded as a bipartisan success story.
Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams and the GOP-led state legislature have largely agreed on the parameters of mail-voting. Beshear and Adams have both pushed back on right-wing efforts to denigrate early voting, mail-in voting and the use of voting machines.
So where does the new focus of Trump, who won the state by 30 percentage points in 2024, on voting methods leave the state?
It’s hard to know, judging from the responses of the state’s Republican leaders.
“Kentucky is not one of the states that conducts elections primarily by mail,” Adams wrote in a statement to the Herald-Leader. “Moreover, with funding from the first Trump administration and the General Assembly, Kentucky has replaced voting machines with paper ballots. Kentucky continues to receive national attention and praise for the security and accessibility of our elections.”
Adams has previously been a vociferous opponent of Republicans who insist on doing away with voting machines, limiting early voting and try to undermine vote-by-mail opportunities. Last year, he was awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for that work.
How an executive order would interplay with Kentucky law, as the country’s system of federalism typically leaves voting laws up to individual states, is unclear.
Currently, one of the Trump administration’s executive orders on voting is tied up in court. In July, a federal judge blocked the administration’s push requiring everyone to show government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote.
Josh Douglas, a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law specializing in elections, wrote on social media that Trump’s push would go nowhere.
“None of this is constitutional. The president has absolutely zero authority to tell states how to run elections,” Douglas wrote.
Whether it comes in the form of an executive order or just a general push, House Majority Floor Leader Steven Rudy, R-Paducah, told the Herald-Leader he would consider “looking” at the topics Trump has chosen to emphasize.
“We have done as much as we can to make Kentucky’s election secure. We can’t say anything about the other states’ election security, though we share concerns about it,” Rudy said. “We looked very closely at mail-in absentees and that concern, (but) I always worry about military voters and disenfranchising them, so it would be something we would consider looking at. If we wanted to do a complete thing, I think we would have to have some exceptions altogether, though, because people who are deployed should still have the right to vote.”
Trump, in his Monday post rife with all-caps emphasis, framed mail-in voting and voting machines as tools for Democrats to unfairly influence elections. There is no evidence for this broad claim, and Trump has continued to insist falsely that he won the 2020 election, which saw former President Joe Biden defeat Trump by a comfortable electoral college margin and a seven million-plus popular vote margin.
Trump also claimed falsely that no other country has mail-in voting. Canada and the United Kingdom, among several other democracies, use mail-in voting.
Franklin County Clerk Jeff Hancock told the Herald-Leader in a statement that Kentucky’s current system, achieved through bipartisan compromise, works well. Hancock, a Democrat, wrote that Kentucky has “done it right.”
“No election system is perfect, but we are ahead of the curve with our signature verification for the military and overseas, and excused absentee voting for our elderly and sick comes from citizen-driven legislation,” he said in a statement. “The state’s three-day no-excuses early voting is being utilized across the state, relieving voters’ frustration from long lines and congestion at polling locations on Election Day.
“Overall, the Commonwealth of Kentucky has led the charge for fair, honest elections and election reform, with all citizens being considered in the decision-making process,” Hancock wrote.
