‘Obviously a terrible idea.’ KY should not jettison three days of early voting. | Opinion
Secretary of State Michael Adams certainly doesn’t need my help in the media jujitsu he’s so adept at playing.
Adams, a Republican, has been busily defending the meager three days of early voting that Sen. John Schickel, R-Union would like to eliminate in Senate Bill 61. But here at #BadBillWatch, this one went straight up to the top of the list, so we’re throwing in our 2 cents as well.
The 2020 expansion to early voting, which came out of a compromise during the pandemic, moved Kentucky from one of the most restrictive states on voting access to somewhere a little better. That is to say, we’re still nowhere near states that allow one or two weeks of early voting, or mail-in voting, but we’ve opened up voting to a lot more people than before. The percentage of people using early voting has continued to rise to a rate of 19.6 percent this past fall in the general election, according to Adams’s office.
As Adams told a local TV station, SB 61 would be terrible for Kentucky, in reputation and reality.
“Number one, it would be horrible for our citizens,” he said to Local 12, a CBS affiliate covering Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. “But number two, it would be a huge black eye to Kentucky before the rest of the country. You’ve seen boycotts and stuff against, [let’s] say, Georgia for tightening their election rules. All they did was get rid of some of the weeks of early voting they had.
“If we go from having just four days to vote to just one day to vote, we’ll be the subject of national boycotts. It will be embarrassing in front of the rest of the country. They’ll call us bigots. They’ll call us vote suppressors.”
Three days of early voting that include Saturday means people who have difficult schedules can actually exercise their right to vote. Schickel takes that right very seriously because he said it was a great privilege, and waiting in line is not really a problem.
Except it is on Election Day. Early voting allows less stress for election workers and more time for voters. In Fayette County, for example, there were four voting sites open for early voting, with all the regular precincts open on Election Day.
“It’s obviously a terrible idea — there’s literally nothing bad and everything good about early voting,” said Josh Douglas, a constitutional law professor at the University of Kentucky, who is looking at this and other voting issues on his new podcast “Democracy Optimist.”
“Kentucky was in the immense minority of states that allowed voting only on one day,” Douglas said. “This would be a major step backwards.”
Not to mention it would certainly be challenged in court. Douglas said there is history to suggest that courts don’t like access being taken away once it’s granted.
The bill has been assigned to committee, and is now co-sponsored by the usual far-right suspects like Sen. Lindsey Tichenor and Sen. Gex Williams.
But it’s not clear leadership is behind it, or whether it’s just a swipe at Adams, who has been clear and unequivocal about his disdain for that particular wing of the Republican Party, with its election denial and sadistic culture wars. He’s also been clear about his aspirations to run for higher office.
People like what Adams is doing, they like him standing up for election integrity and against the maniacal fantasies that have become so pervasive. That’s why they gave him more votes than any other candidate for constitutional office in our most recent election.
Maybe Schickel’s bill is enough to knock him down. Or maybe it’s just another petty waste of time.
This story was originally published January 17, 2024 at 7:47 AM.
