Fayette County Clerk wants to close some schools for early voting. This idea may not fly.
Voting and elections have become hot topics the past few years, and in Fayette County, it’s about to get even hotter.
Fayette County Clerk Don Blevins is extremely worried about new election laws in Kentucky that allow early voting on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday before an election Tuesday. He estimates that as much as 50 percent of Fayette voters will want to do it early, and on new equipment using paper ballots that his staff is not used to.
The only problem is that he won’t have access to all 140 voting sites that are always open on Election Day, mostly schools and churches.
“That’s really a core problem,” Blevins said. “We’re compressing a lot of voters into a short amount without the facilties to accommodate the demand.”
So Blevins has come up with an interesting potential idea: ask some middle and high schools to use NTI days on the Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday — May 12, 13, 16 and 17 — so that they can be turned into accessible precincts around the county. He met with Fayette Superintendent Demetrus Liggins on Monday, and he thinks they can work it out.
“They have enough NTI days and the maneuverability to make this work,” Blevins said.
The only thing that might have to change is statute that requires all schools to be closed if one is closed for voting.
Hmmm. Let’s take a deep breath. Before all of us who are parents watch our brains explode, let’s recap how we got here.
Breathe deeply
In the 2020 primary and general election, Kentucky voters could for the first time request an absentee ballot without an excuse like sickness or , essentially creating vote by mail. We also had three weeks of early voting in person so people wouldn’t be crowded together during a pandemic. In Fayette, early voting was held in eight places, including libraries, the Dunbar Center, the Senior Center, two schools, and BCTC on Leestown.
“Together, they gave geographic coverage and enough capacity since most voted by mail,” Blevins said.
Although many Kentuckians questioned the legitimacy of the presidential results, they also swept numerous Kentucky Republicans back into office and further armored the supermajority of the GOP in the General Assembly.
In response, the General Assembly wrote new laws that took Kentucky from being one of the most restrictive voting states to, well, somewhere in the middle. Now we have an online portal to request absentee ballots, although you have to have a legitimate excuse to request one. And three days of early voting.
But three days of early voting is kind of complicated. It’s not enough time to create one central voting location that people can make time to visit, but it’s too much time to use the same general election precincts.
As Blevins wrote to legislators on Jan. 26: “Allowing only 3 days for early voting creates an untenable situation for a large county- how to handle massive crowds of voters and where to find voting locations. In Fayette, there are precious few locations available for this purpose and they will easily be overwhelmed with voters, creating long lines, frustration, and accusations of voter suppression.”
Blevins, along with the county clerks from other large counties like Jefferson and Kenton, asked for help from the legislature, like possibly making early voting longer so they could find fewer sites. But legislators made it clear they’re not going to amend the law.
He looked around other locations, like the Lexington Convention Center, but it’s booked through 2025. There’s only one library on the North Side, which would cause long lines. But schools, especially middle and high schools with big gyms, are sprinkled through every neighborhood in the city. Blevins estimates he needs about 10 sites. He figured parents would be better with it than any plan to close all the schools.
“If this plan works in the primary, then we will learn a lot,” he said.
Fayette Schools spokeswoman Lisa Deffendall declined to comment.
Help needed
However. I’m not sure if Blevins is fully tuned in to how angry and sensitive a lot of parents still are in the wake of COVID closures, and how, even at the middle and high school level, they might react to four days of at-home NTI days in the spring and the fall. (Although early voting is only on Thursday, Friday and Saturday before Election Day, the sites would have to remain closed on Monday too because of voting machine security.)
Also, regarding the primary election, mid to late May tends to get very busy in high schools, from AP testing to performances to exams, which might make educators even less likely to like this idea.
Elections are important. Schools are important. Does anyone have any ideas about how they can both work with early voting? What about empty warehouses or big church gyms in different areas of town that can be secured and are ADA-acccessible? The issue is enough places so the lines aren’t too long. When lines are too long, accusations of voter suppression follow soon behind.
Election veteran and former Secretary of State Trey Grayson said it’s time for folks in the bigger counties to get creative.
“It’s a new world of voting and we want to make this work,” Grayson said. “We need to think creatively — are there empty spaces like baseball stadiums or office space that is currently empty?”
There have to be other options — are there businesses, are there empty spaces like the baseball stadium, BCTCS, warehouses that are currently empty,
Send your ideas to Fayette County Clerk Don Blevins at DBlevins@fayettecountyclerk.com. He could also use more poll workers, if anyone is interested in that.
This story was originally published February 11, 2022 at 12:16 PM.
