GOP leader wants ‘summaries’ instead of full text for KY constitution amendments
One of Kentucky’s most powerful legislators wants to amend the state constitution in order to change the way Kentuckians vote to amend the state constitution.
Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, filed Senate Bill 262 Thursday, which would allow constitutional amendments to appear on the ballot as a “summary that clearly and accurately states the substance and effect of the proposed amendment,” or as a ballot question.
As a constitutional amendment, Stivers bill would need three-fifths support in both the House and Senate as well as majority approval from Kentucky voters in November. The full text of his proposal would need to be included.
It comes after many high profile Republican-backed constitutional amendments — which have had to be written out on the ballot in full — have been rejected by voters.
Kentucky voters in all 120 counties swatted down a 2024 proposal that would have explicitly allowed the General Assembly to allocate public dollars on private or charter schools. In 2022 voters rejected both amendments put before them, including one that would have effectively blocked legal challenges to the state’s abortion ban.
“The full text of the proposed amendment shall not be required to be printed on the ballot. Instead, it shall be submitted to the voters of the State in the form of a ballot question or summary that clearly and accurately states the substance and effect of the proposed amendment,” the proposal reads.
A spokesperson for Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams told the Herald-Leader that Adams supports the bill.
Kelsey Coots, a consultant who ran the campaign against the 2024 education amendment, told the Herald-Leader that Stivers’ proposal was anti-transparency.
“Kentuckians deserve to know exactly what they’re voting on, always. Allowing lawmakers to handpick a summary instead of printing the full amendment text on the ballot is a transparency problem, and it raises serious questions about who benefits when voters are kept in the dark,” Coots wrote in a statement to the Herald-Leader.
Stivers’ push comes years after this issue was the subject of a major court case.
The Kentucky Supreme Court struck down Marsy’s Law — a bill proponents said increased victims rights but detractors said would gum up the legal process — after Kentucky voters OK’d it in 2018, because its full text was not included on the ballot. Then, in 2020, Kentucky voters approved the amendment with the full text included on the ballot.
Former state Sen. Whitney Westerfield wrote in a statement to the Herald-Leader he thought Stivers’ idea was a solid one.
“The Court created out of whole cloth a requirement to load a ballot with an entire amendment’s full text, leading to much lengthier ballots and substantial voter confusion, upending many decades of practice of enacting a clear, unbiased ballot question to pose to the voters,” Westerfield wrote.
Much was also made of 2022’s Amendment 1, a pages-long amendment aimed at making it easier for the legislature to call themselves into session. It failed by seven points.
Only one of the last four constitutional amendments passed by the Republican-led legislature, which banned noncitizens from voting in any elections, have passed.
Other states vary in their approach to ballot questions. Some allow them to originate with the citizenry, which Kentucky does not. Others require summaries to be under a certain word limit — Florida’s is 75.
Stivers was not immediately available for comment on the bill.
