The New York Times
Why Kentucky Just Became the Only Red State to Expand Voting Rights
Jennifer Decker has a solid Conservative credential. A first-term Republican lawmaker in Kentucky who previously worked for Senator Rand Paul represents a province that voted Donald Trump by nearly 30 percentage points last year. At a time when many of her Republican counterparts are running across the country to pass strictly new restrictions on voting – fueled in part by Trump’s lies about the 2020 election – Decker’s first major bill has changed. It aimed to make it easier for people to vote in the state. Register The Morning Newsletter of the New York Times Kentucky on Wednesday became the only state in the country with a Republican-controlled legislature extending voting rights after a bitter presidential election that tested the country’s democratic institutions and access to the ballot increased as a living matter. for both parties. At a signing ceremony on Wednesday, Democrat Andy Beshear, a Democrat, viewed the bill as a two-party award that cut against the pressure in other Republican lawmakers to put obstacles in the way of the vote. “When a large part of the country introduced more restrictive laws, Kentucky lawmakers, Kentucky leaders, could come together to stand up for democracy and to expand the opportunity for people to vote,” Beshear said. The reasons why Kentucky Republicans differ in voting rights range from political to logistical. For one, it was easier to sell: With new rules allowed to keep the election safe during the coronavirus pandemic, Republicans in Kentucky had one of their best cycles in years, with both Senator Mitch McConnell and Trump easily won in the state. . And expanding voting access in Kentucky was a low standard to clean up; the state has by 2020 some of the strictest laws in the country, with not a single day of early voting, and strict limits for absenteeism. The pressure in Kentucky and other states – including Democratic-controlled Virginia, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii and Massachusetts – reflects a strange outcome of the pandemic: The most challenging election in nearly a century has brought about extensive changes across the country to gain access to the ballot box. “We did things a little differently because of COVID, and I just thought some of them could help us move forward,” Decker said in an interview. “And election reform must not be biased. Partial majorities may change at any time. Republicans and Democrats in Kentucky overwhelmingly supported and celebrated the bill, announcing it as a welcome two-party performance. But advocates for suffrage are more subdued, pointing to the relatively limited scope of legislation and the mix of measures, such as the introduction of a short period of early voting, as well as new restrictions introduced under the banner of election certainty. They warn that the proposal is a modest improvement in a state that has long been hostile to suffrage – which even conservatives recognize. “Kentucky has probably had the most restrictive laws in the country to vote up to this point,” said Michael Adams, the Republican secretary of state, who was the leading force behind the bill. “And that’s what we’re trying to change.” Even with the new expanded access to the vote, Kentucky’s voting rules remain relatively stricter than those of Georgia, which recently revamped its electoral system with new restrictions on voting. Even under Georgia’s new legislation, for example, the state still has no excuse for absenteeism and a much longer earlier voting period than Kentucky. Kentucky law provides for three days of early state voting; introduce voting centers that enable more personal voting options; create an online portal to register and request ballot papers; and enables voters to resolve issues with absent ballots, a process known as healing. Voting experts note that three days of early voting is still a short window to other countries hosting the process, and that the law does not provide for excuses. It also includes restrictions such as the ban on the collection of ballot papers, a practice in which one person collects and submits the ballot papers of multiple voters. Nearly all of the country’s current efforts to expand voting access are taking place in states with democratically-led legislatures, and they go much further to expand voting access than Kentucky law does. Connecticut is trying to make the absence of votes without apology permanent after the method worked successfully in last year’s election, and Delaware is working on a constitutional amendment to add voting without abolition. Hawaii is advancing toward the introduction of automatic voter registration. And Massachusetts is looking for a number of changes, including the addition of voter registration on the same day and the extension of early voting. “The 2020 election will help them give confidence that they can act quickly to expand access and not have to go slow,” said Sylvia Albert, director of the Common Cause voting rights group, about these states. She said Kentucky does not fall into the category of true enlargement because the new law will offer fewer options than the 2020 emergency orders. ‘It could be a political calculation made by the Democrats in the state, so the Republicans not going. even further to suppress the mood like other states, ”she said. “But as an electoral bill on voters, it is not successful.” While Kentucky’s compromise – expanding voting access while introducing a more restrictive policy in the name of electoral security – could serve as a model for other Republican-controlled states, it’s likely to be a blip in a year of GOP-led pressure to vote. restrictions. It was indeed a unique set of circumstances and an unlikely coalition in Kentucky that led to the state’s first steps in a generation to expand access to the vote. Adams embarked on a successful, fair and secure election with a number of temporary policies during the pandemic, and Adams began the dutiful task of investigating rural election administrators over the new rules. He expected complaints, but found strong support for some of the measures, especially the multiple days of early voting. Adams therefore went to the Republican leadership in the legislature to determine his interest in adopting some of the policies. After a 2020 election in which Republicans took seats in the legislature and McConnell sailed for an easy victory, the GOP leaders in Kentucky had a very different political calculator than the Republicans in Georgia, who saw their able to turn blue for the first time in a generation. . They were open, they said, though they were not necessarily eager to shake things up. “The hard part was initially getting a sponsor,” Adams said, “because it was so unlikely that anyone wanted to be the sponsor.” Go inside Paul. The Kentucky junior senator, who is up for re-election next year and has repeatedly made false statements about the 2020 election, reached out to Adams with some concerns about the Kentucky election law. But he soon came up with the idea of a compromise attempt by expanding some access points while restricting others. And he had an idea for a sponsor: Decker, who was interested in a revamp of the election after the high turnout in last year’s vote. “I have been a lifelong Republican, I have long been chairman of the Republican Party in my country, and I have never felt that the election was more than good,” Decker said. The bill quickly began to gain momentum in the Legislature. And Democrats, who were watching the effort carefully, would be on board soon. “We have seen a bill before us this year, and you have to acknowledge some of the political realities of Kentucky,” said Morgan McGarvey, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate. “This bill does not do everything I want to see in an election reform law, but it is definitely a step in the right direction.” For years, Democrats in the state legislature worked to expand the vote in Kentucky, both by submitting big, transformative bills that never had a chance of succeeding, and attempts to expand such as just trying to get ballots. open until 8 p.m. (Kentucky currently closes polls at 6 p.m. on Election Day, the earliest closing time in the country with Indianas.) The party has been consistently repelled by the Senate, which has been controlled by Republicans since 1999. “No one can reason: it expands the voting options in Kentucky,” McGarvey said. ‘Every Kentuckian has more choices about when and how to vote than before this law. So this is something we’ve been fighting for for years, and I’m not going to delay it. Republicans quickly praised the bill. Paul said in a statement that he was ‘proud’ of the effort and that it would ensure that ‘our election is accurate and accessible’. The Honest Elections Project, a conservative group that has joined legal efforts to restore access to the right to vote, said the bill struck a balance on “the need for access and security.” Joshua Douglas, a professor of electoral law at the University of Kentucky who was part of a small team of provincial election officials and other experts who consulted Adams about the initial effort, said that ‘it was not the bill I was in any way would not have written. . He added: “But it has a lot of things I like and not a ton that I hate.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company