Election board approves Kenton County polling place plan

BY NATHAN GRANGER | LINK nky CONTRIBUTOR

The Kentucky Board of Elections unanimously voted to approve a plan for polling place locations in Kenton County.

The special meeting to approve the plan that the county’s board of elections had submitted for approval earlier this month took place Thursday in Frankfort and was streamed live on state board’s YouTube page.

The board had approved most of the Kentucky counties’ proposals on Feb. 21, but several members of the board wanted more time to consider and discuss Kenton County’s submission as well the proposals of 13 other counties.

Many of the clerks from the counties on the docket, including Kenton County’s own clerk and elections board chair Gabrielle Summe, attended the meeting to answer questions and offer reasoning for their proposals.

“When we come up with a plan, it is not arbitrary,” Summe said, addressing the members of the election board.

Kenton County’s proposed plan contained 34 polling places, which was an increase from the 24 polling places the county had in the 2022 primary and general elections but a decrease from the 47 locations in the general election before that.

Kentucky law grants local, county-based elections boards the power to propose voting precincts and polling locations to the state board of elections based on the county’s geography, population, availability of locations and availability of poll workers. If a county fails to provide a plan to the state board before the deadline, the county will default to a polling plan in which there is a single polling location in each of the county’s voting precincts.

Several Kenton County leaders expressed displeasure at the conditions of the 2022 general election, in which access to some voting sites was impeded by long lines and other logistical issues.

As a result, they hoped to implement a voting place model in which there is at least one polling site per precinct rather than the county’s consolidated plan. Kenton County has 70 voting precincts.

“In 2014, the City of Erlanger had a total of 13 precincts and 13 polling locations for 13,607 registered voters,” Erlanger Mayor Jessica Fette wrote In a letter to Kentucky Election Board Chair Michael Adams. “By 2016, there were 14,010 registered voters yet still the same number of precincts and polling locations. However, for the 2022 elections, the City of Erlanger now has 15,807 registered voters and has been consolidated into 6 precincts and 2 polling locations.”

Later in the letter, Fette requested that the board return the city to “13 precincts with a polling location in as many of those precincts as possible.”

She also offered several city facilities not currently being used as polling places to become new voting sites.

Likewise, in a January letter to both the county and state board of elections, the Covington Commission wrote of its wish to return to a voting plan in which at least one voting location was in each voting precinct.

At a commission caucus meeting on Feb. 21, Covington Mayor Joe Meyer reaffirmed his desire for such a plan.

“If we can’t get addressed for the primary, hopefully, we can get it addressed for the general election,” Meyer said.

On the other hand, not all leaders are upset about the county’s proposal.

Independence Mayor Chris Reinersman is pleased with the new plan, even though he was among the leaders who had initially issued criticism to the county board after all the issues with the 2022 General Election.

“After reviewing the proposed Independence polling places, I am optimistic we won’t see a repeat of 2022,” Reinersman wrote in an email to LINK nky. “While it would always be nicer to have more locations, I am satisfied [the county board chair has] come up with a good solution given the challenges of new legislation and the DOJ consent decree.”

Summe defended the county’s plan to the state board by describing the issues the county election board has had in adapting to new laws passed to make voting easier during the pandemic as well as the county’s difficulties in securing polling places.

“People don’t have to say yes to us,” Summe said. “I got a lot of push-back, particularly with an amendment 2 [which would have prohibited abortion rights in the state’s constitution] because I have polling locations in churches–separation of church and state.”

DO YOU WANT TO WRITE FOR ?

The county also struggled to secure polling places at schools, she said.

“I do use a lot of schools, and they’re all saying we want law enforcement at the front door,” Summe claimed. “I had people walk into polling locations with guns. The poll workers saw them. The school superintendent saw them. They’re trying their hardest to kick me out because they don’t feel safe. And if one school closes, all the schools close. That means most kids aren’t in school and, for my inner city population, they don’t eat.”

She also discussed the difficulties in making locations compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, a federal law requiring all polling places in the country to be easily accessible for people with disabilities and other issues with mobility.

Following an informal complaint from a citizen about accessibility of polling locations in the 2022 primary, Kenton County entered into a consent decree with the Department of Justice to better survey and provide accommodations for the polling places in the county. Summe will need to submit her polling place plan to the DOJ for approval now that the state has confirmed the plan.

The next meeting of the Kentucky Board of Elections will take place virtually and in Frankfort on Tuesday, March 21. Viewers can watch via kentoncountykyclerk.com.

To apply to be a contributor, Scan the QR code:

Covington Commission declines to vote on short-term rental ordinance

The Covington City Commission declined to vote on an ordinance to increase penalties for short-term rental landlords at its Feb. 28 meeting.

The ordinance was due for its second reading and a vote from commission members, but per the advice of City Solicitor David Davidson, the commission moved to amend the ordinance to comply with what Davidson described as a clerical error in the ordinance’s language.

meeting’s public comment section.

tion of city law.