The 2022 Kentucky primary: What changes to expect when you go to vote.

Kentucky’s election system wasn’t immune to the many changes wrought by the coronavirus pandemic over the past two years.

While swift changes by the legislature in 2020 allowed early voting for the first time and enabled a surge of mail-in balloting, state officials have retooled elections law once more. As such, we’ve rounded up some of the changes voters can expect as part of the May 2022 primary election, including what you can expect to be different when you visit the polls.

Kentucky’s early voting in May 2022 will last for a shorter period

While the need for reduced crowd sizes allowed Kentucky to launch early, no excuse needed voting for the first time in 2020, the accessible three-week voting window has been narrowed by the state.

As part of changes introduced in 2021, early voting in Kentucky, including for this primary, lasts three days – May 12 to 14 – making it among the states with the fewest days of early voting in the country.

“We are the shortest early voting (state) in the entire nation at three days,” Fayette County Clerk Don Blevins Jr., who oversees elections for Kentucky’s second most populous county, told the League of Women Voters of Lexington April 21.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, early voting in the U.S., conducted state to state, ranges from three days to 46, with the average number of early in-person voting coming in at 23 days.

Kentucky’s narrow window for early, in-person balloting without an approved excuse has presented some challenges, Blevins said.

“If you try to get thousands and thousands of people through venues over three days, it means that you have to have either a lot of venues or several very large venues,” he noted.

The University of Kentucky will host the three-day, countywide early voting site for Fayette County at Kroger Field, but the stadium won’t be an option in November, Blevins said.

Trying to use other public spaces, particularly public school facilities, has proven contentious, with parents and educators unhappy about using non-traditional instruction days to allow voters into school buildings.

As such, the challenges of a compressed timeframe for early voting, its popularity and the availability of suitable venues could prove a standing issue.

What’s new with precincts and at the polls

On Tuesday, May 17, however, voters will head to their assigned polling place for Election Day.

A new statewide change this year the Fayette clerk deemed helpful was the ability to use consolidated voting machines and precinct officials at polling places that house more than a single precinct.

“Under the new rules, I can consolidate (multiple functions) and use one machine, in our case a scanner, and it also consolidated the election officers to make it feel more like a vote center.”

The change likely won’t make much difference to voters, but for county budgets, it means fewer precinct staff and fewer machines to keep running.

Fayette County alone will have 133 locations on Election Day, Blevins said.

Other changes to absentee voting

As part of House Bill 564, signed by Gov. Andy Beshear April 7, in-person, excused voting ahead of election day was reinstated. For the May 17 election, that six-day period ran May 4-6 and May 9-11.

The voting method allows those with acceptable excuses to visit their respective county clerk and vote ahead of Election Day.

Though it’s not a change from the last election cycle, Kentucky’s 2020 voter identification requirements will be in effect for the May primaries.

Among the acceptable forms of photo identification are:

• Federal or state IDs
• IDs from the U.S. Department of Defense, a branch of the uniformed services, the Merchant Marines, or Kentucky National Guard
• IDs from a public or private college, university, or postgraduate technical or professional school located within the U.S.
• IDs from any government entity located within Kentucky

Perhaps one of the biggest changes voters may notice at the polls this year are the introduction of electronic poll books and the reintroduction of paper ballots.

As part of House Bill 574, the state prompted counties to transition from electronic voter machines back to paper ballots. The move is one already implemented or being implemented by a number of states in recent years.

“We will be, for the first time, fully using our new voting machines that use paper ballots,” Blevins said of Lexington voters. “So many parts of the county or people in the county have not gotten to use those yet because we all voted by mail back in 2020.”

Ballots are not typically hand-counted in Kentucky, instead they are scanned and the paper records are maintained according to a retention schedule.

The county will also be using electronic poll books for the first time, so voters can expect to sign electronically for their ballot.

Mr. Blevins said the process would prove “much, much faster” and voters should not be worried if the quality of their electronic signature is not perfect.

How busy will this election be?

Kentucky saw wide turnout for the November 2020 presidential election, with 60.3% of registered voters hitting the polls, according to the state. But midterms and primaries routinely underperform presidential election years.

State records show 38.1% of Fayette County voters participated in the primary in June of the same year, and for the state as a whole that figure was 31.1%.

For the 2018 midterm elections, just 25.3% of Fayette County voters made selections in the May 22 contests, while the turnout statewide was even lower at 23.9%.

If trends hold, wider participation — closer to or exceeding 50% in Lexington — can be expected for November’s general election.

Do you have a question about elections or voting in Kentucky? We’d like to hear from you. Fill out the form below or email ask@herald-leader.com.

This story was originally published May 12, 2022 at 6:00 AM.