How This Red State Expanded Voting Access
Many Republican states have restricted voting options, but Kentucky is charting a path that once looked impossible. Can anyone else follow?
Jon Cherry via Getty Images
Election officials chat in the polling area in the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage on Nov. 3, 2020, in Louisville, Kentucky.
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On the afternoon of Jan. 21, a group of public officials gathered in Kentucky’s Capitol in Frankfort for a delicate conversation about changing how the state conducts elections. Masked and spread out in a room typically used for committee hearings, they didn’t have much time.
Introduction
On the afternoon of January 21, a group of public officials gathered in Kentucky’s Capitol in Frankfort for a delicate conversation about changing how the state conducts elections. Masked and spread out in a room typically used for committee hearings, they didn’t have much time.
There were only 22 days left in the legislative session.
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The group included state legislators, Secretary of State Michael Adams, Republican and Democratic elected county clerks, representatives of the state elections board and (virtually) a staff member for U.S. Sen. Rand Paul. They took turns laying out what the executive director of the state elections board described as a “hodgepodge” of priorities increasing voter access among them that somehow had to evolve into a bill that could pass. Everyone put their wish lists on the table.