1/31/24

Kentucky’s Pretty Good Electoral Process

HIGHLIGHTS
  • Kentucky provides a model for other states
  • paper ballots
  • machines that only count ballots and do not ‘adjudicate’, i.e., allow elections officials to change who a person voted for
  • citizenship requirement, voter ID, limited early voting, precinct-level counting, etc.

From a Kentucky activist:

Here is our fairly new KY process, in a nutshell:
  1. Register to vote: https://elect.ky.gov/Resources/Pages/Registration.aspx  Citizenship is required, and other limitations
  2. Check in to vote  -we use an EPollbook system to catch multi-voters, but there is some push to go back to paper logs  https://elect.ky.gov/Resources/Pages/E-Poll-Book-Products.aspx
  3. 3 days of early voting Thu, Fri, Sat before Tuesday election. No results reported before polls close Tuesday https://elect.ky.gov/Resources/Documents/2024%20Election%20Calendar%20(Final%20Revision).pdf   There is a proposal to eliminate early voting.
  4. Show ID to vote, or pollworker and voter sign affidavit under penalty of perjury that they are in fact who they say they are an eligible https://elect.ky.gov/Voters/Pages/Absentee-Excused-In-Person.aspx
  5. Everyone votes on paper ballots, 90% + hand marked, but we have some Voter Verified Paper machines that produce a printed ballot that is scanned by a tabulator like all ballots https://elect.ky.gov/Resources/Pages/Voting-Systems.aspx
  6. Ballots are scanned into tabulators, (felony to connect tabulator to internet),
  7. Ballots remain locked in the tabulators until polls close on election day, under video surveillance, no results reported early, no results reported to anyone but the State Board of Elections on a private network.
  8. Totals from tabulators are printed out and signed by election workers and taped to the polling place door.  MBB cards are removed from each tabulator and taken to County Clerk for aggregation of County totals.
  9. State BoE posts unofficial results online for public and media, in-house system https://vrsws.sos.ky.gov/liveresults/  We have no central counting stations, no ballot adjudication, all results posted at precincts before pollworkers go home, and summarized by 9 or 10 PM statewide.
  10. Official results require certifications from County Boards of election, and the State boards of election over the next 30 days, and there are audits by the AG office during that time.  I have a bill for random eyeball recounts of scanner totals to "check the tech".