As the nation’s election process remains under a powerful microscope, vote by mail and early voting options could be here to stay.
A new and recently-released report from nonpartisan election policy group Secure Democracy USA indicates that nearly half of all rural voters in the country — and nearly 75% of rural Kentuckians — opted to vote by mail or voted early in-person for the 2020 election.
With more than 754,000 voting age residents living in 59 rural counties, Kentucky features the eighth-highest ratio of its voting age population living in rural counties. That’s nearly 1 in every 4 Kentuckians.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics Urban Rural schemes, those 59 designated counties include Caldwell, Crittenden, Lyon, Marshall and Todd.
Rural voters in Kentucky are simply outpacing nationwide trends toward voting before Election Day, and for several reasons — most of them related to convenience and proximity. On Election Day, voters in the rural Commonwealth seen an average of one polling location for every 65 square miles. And during the early voting period, rural Kentucky voters seen average of one polling place for every 212 square miles.
The report went on to mention that many rural voters, especially in Kentucky, rely on same-day voter registration. States and their rural counties with same-day registration saw nearly 3% of their voter rolls increased in 2020.
With the 2022 general election quickly approaching, Kentucky’s rural voters still face some challenges.
Recommendations from the report include the expansion of access to early in-person voting, the improvement of access to mail voting, and the modernization of voter registration.
As of now, Kentucky offers just three days of early voting. Even more leeway would ensure convenient access to early voting locations in rural areas, which will mathematically bring forth more rural voters.
Access to secure 24-hour drop boxes, expanded request and return deadlines for mail ballots, comprehensive ballot tracking and extended “cure” process would allow more voters to fix mistakes on their ballots.
Same-day voter registration, while streamlining opportunities to register with other governmental agencies, would simplify the process for voters who live further away from a clerk’s office.
