— by Nadia Ramlagan, Kentucky News Service —
More than 153,000 Kentuckians are still being denied the right to vote because of a past felony conviction, according to recent data from the League of Women Voters of Kentucky.
More than 191,000 Kentuckians regained the right to vote under Gov. Andy Beshear's 2019 executive order, yet the report found the Commonwealth of Kentucky disenfranchised more than 4.5% of its voting-eligible population in last year’s presidential election.
Tip Moody, member of the League of Women Voters of Kentucky, said the state is experiencing a troubling trend.
“We are now number four in the country,” Moody pointed out. “We are worse in our percentage of disenfranchised citizens than we were two years ago.”
Between April 2020 and last Jan. 2, the Kentucky Department of Corrections vetted and forwarded 815 individual petitions requesting a partial pardon to the Office of the Governor. So far during his time in office, Beshear has granted 114 pardons.
Becky Jones, vice president of the League of Women Voters of Kentucky, said the state has lagged behind on the issue of voting rights restoration because it has not been a priority among lawmakers.
“I think it could be a priority for legislators if the public started applying pressure to them to make them understand how important it is to them,” Jones observed. “We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people that have been affected.”
Kentucky is one of only three states in the country to disenfranchise or strip away the right to vote for a citizen who has committed a felony offense. That inability to vote lasts for the rest of their life.
Moody explained he had his voting rights restored but pointed out the journey for most other residents is an uphill battle.
“People like me, regardless of what is in our past and what we are doing in our present, there is still a stigma associated with that, and there is a lack of value,” Moody added.
The report showed nearly 2,000 Kentuckians with felony convictions had their sentences extended in the past year, because they could not pay what the court ordered them to pay, creating a further barrier to having the means to begin the voting rights restoration process.
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