Kentucky Republicans push restrictive😳 voting law after landmark Democratic win🤔
New bureaucratic hurdle where voters must carry ID with a photo likely to affect minorities and students
New bureaucratic hurdle where voters must carry ID with a photo likely to affect minorities and students
Last month, Kentucky elected Democratic governor Andy Beshear in a closely watch election – a landmark blue win in a mostly conservative state.
One of the core promises of his campaign was to restore voting rights to 140,000 people with felony convictions, which he fulfilled immediately after taking office.
Weeks after Beshear issued his historic executive order, however, Kentucky Republicans have proposed a restrictive new bureaucratic hurdle that will likely make it more difficult for minorities and students in the state to vote.
The timing of the bill, which mandates that voters carry an identification card with a photo, is significant: Republicans made it a legislative priority and want it to be in effect for the 2020 general election.
This is also the election when Republican senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader and a senior face of the establishment GOP, will run in a nationally-watched re-election fight.
Kentucky already requires voter ID at the polls, but the new policy would take this a step further to require a photo and an expiration date. Minorities, who are less likely to possess an acceptable form of ID, and students, are particularly likely to be affected.
The University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville, two of the biggest schools in the state, do not currently have expiration dates on their student IDs. This is a tactic that has been used in several other states,
often to curb the vote of young and transient populations more likely to vote for Democrats.
It appears that Republicans were likely to push the bill regardless of Beshear’s win. Michael Adams, the Kentucky secretary of state, had already been campaigning on a photo ID requirement last year.
He told the Louisville Courier-Journal the measure would help deter voter fraud. But Adams also said he could not think of a case of voter impersonation in the state in the last 10 years, and voter fraud in the United States is extremely rare.
“It’s a solution in search of a problem. There’s no issue in Kentucky elections with in-person impersonation,” said Joshua Douglas, a law professor at the University of Kentucky who served on Adams’ transition team.
He added that Kentucky already has some of the most restrictive voting laws in the country – a 30-day cutoff for voter registration and no early voting period.
The Kentucky proposal would provide free identification to people who can’t afford one, and allows them to vote with a provisional ballot if they sign an affidavit at the polls swearing they can’t get an ID.
But to have their ballot counted, the voter then would have to go to their local election official’s office by Friday after the election w acceptable Id If they still don’t have acceptable identification, they would have to swear to a statement that they were unable to obtain it.
