KENTUCKY — During this week’s “In Focus Kentucky.” program State Sen. David Givens, R-Greensburg joins the program to discuss a wide range of topics, including his recent election where he easily won re-election to the Kentucky state senate 75%-25%, over his Democratic challenger.

In this segment, Sen. Givens shares his reaction to election results in the Commonwealth, where Kentucky voters cast their ballots on two proposed amendments to the state constitution, with Amendment 1 passing and the highly debated Amendment 2 being rejected by voters.

Amendment 2, which proposed changes that would affect public education, generated the most voter attention leading up to the General Election and was ultimately rejected by a majority of Kentucky voters, failing it in all 120 counties.

“In the case of Amendment 1, they’ve affirmed that they don’t want noncitizens voting in elections. And Amendment 2, they disaffirmed our recommendation to provide us [with] another means of educating the students in Kentucky. And so we’re going to move forward on those policy questions. We will continue to move very, very positively in the direction of educating our citizenry. Because when you look at what state government is designed for across all 50 states, we spend over half of our budget. Almost 55% of our budget goes for K through 12 and postsecondary education. So the largest amount of the money that we spend goes for education. And we’ll continue to have a lot of positive policy coming in,” explained State Sen. Givens.

The Senate President Pro Tempore also weighs in on why he believes Amendment 2 was defeated 1,298,333 votes to 706,591, in unofficial statewide results.

“Well, a lot of money was spent on amendment two, and the money creates and crafts the message. It was crafted a little bit on both sides in ways that I thought were not exactly perfect. The amendment is a clear enough amendment just to enable the future legislators to try to find education delivery mechanisms other than the public school method. I think the other thing that I’ll point out, and this is what I’ve discovered after multiple conversations with constituents, not just about this amendment, but with others, voters typically start at no you walk into that voting booth and you’ve got three quarters of a page of text, you’re not gonna sit there and read your daily life is so busy you probably don’t have time to study the issue in depth on your own, so you’re getting all this noise from either side. Think a lot of people started No, and I think that was also evidenced in Amendment One. I was struck that almost 1/3 of the voters on Amendment One felt it was fine for a noncitizen to vote in elections. I don’t believe that many people think that. I think folks just started no on amendments,” shared State Sen. Givens.

You can watch the full In Focus Kentucky segment in the player above.