I deliberately didn't elaborate on details because I was curious to see if people here would ask insightful questions or just do the "wow fuck that #retweet" without stopping to think, like seemingly a lot of people in the country did.
Could we probably have more voting locations open? Yeah, for sure. However.
In his first week or maybe month in office last year, our governor restored voting rights to over 100,000 felons of non-violent crimes who had served their sentences. Does that sound like the sort of guy who's likely to be looking for ways to practice voter suppression here?
For the first time ever (that I'm aware of anyway) Kentucky had a statewide no-excuse policy for absentee ballots. Literally every registered voter received a card in the mail saying "put your name on this card and you'll get an absentee ballot weeks in advance". This was a plan agreed upon by our democratic governor and republican secretary of state back in like April when they realized how big of an issue covid could create. That doesn't sound like a team who is looking for ways to practice voter suppression.
The city of Louisville has free Lyft rides all day long today with a promo code. Buses are giving free rides to polling locations. The in-person voting locations have been open for like, literally 2 weeks. There's no reason any single person who wants to vote would ever have to step into the polling location if they didn't want to. Unless somehow you like, didn't have a mailing address but were also registered to vote, or something. Idk.
When I say we are on pace for record turnout, I'm not talking about people showing up today. That is based on numbers of absentee ballots which have already been received.
There are a million steps being taken to make sure that it has never been more convenient or accessible to vote in Kentucky, ever, period.
I'm sure our system is not perfect, but damn if the negative press is not frustrating.
This is sounding like poll manipulation from the Democrats. The new governor is a Democrat, right? They must know that Republicans and seniors like to vote at the polls - if you close the polls and tell them to vote by mail, they might just not do it. You could still get an increase in overall turnout from more younger voters and Democrats voting.
If this is going to repeat in November, I hope the GOP is aware of the situation, and does a major outreach blitz to make sure their voters know that their regular polling station might be closed so they may need to vote by mail.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013 Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!