KENTUCKY ⁠— The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), along with several other groups, filed a federal lawsuit May 27, challenging Kentucky's voter ID requirement and asking the state to extend vote-by-mail past June.


What You Need To Know


  • The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit over Kentucky's photo ID law 

  • The ACLU also asked the state to extend vote-by-mail past June

  • Kentucky's photo ID laws are set to go into effect in July

Kentucky's photo ID requirement, the ACLU claims, puts voters at risk by forcing them to visit ID-issuing offices and potentially exposing themselves to COVID-19. 

“Kentuckians should not be forced to choose between their health and their vote. Kentucky can and should protect voters by eliminating the photo ID requirement and allowing vote by mail in the November election because the spread of COVID-19 will remain a risk. Our lawsuit seeks sensible solutions to safely allow people to exercise their right to vote in a pandemic,” said Ceridwen Cherry, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. 

Kentucky's photo ID requirement comes from the recently enacted Senate Bill 2, which also requires voters who apply for a mail-in absentee ballot to include a copy of their photo ID with their application. 

“Unless changes are made to election procedures for the November election, COVID-19 poses an ongoing and very real threat to Kentuckians’ ability to participate safely in that election. SB 2 will further deprive some Kentuckians of their right to vote,” said Corey Shapiro, legal director at the ACLU of Kentucky. “Low-income, racial and ethnic minorities, older people, and people with disabilities have difficulty obtaining ID because they cannot afford or cannot obtain the underlying documents that are required to get a government-issued photo ID card, and they will have similar difficulties providing a photocopy of their photo ID card to obtain an absentee ballot. Placing additional barriers to the ballot box is unjust at any time, but is unconscionable during a pandemic."

Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams (R) responded in a statement saying, "Because the far left is too extreme to win elections, they regularly seek to have courts, rather than legislators, write our laws. Today, several left-wing organizations sued me in an effort to have an unelected federal judge rewrite our election laws for November. If these self-described advocates for democracy actually believed in democracy, they would let the democratic process work and let elected officials make policy. Instead, this lawsuit seeks to have lawmaking powers stripped from elected officials accountable to the people – the General Assembly, the Secretary of State and even the Governor. I will uphold my oath to our Constitution, which places the power to establish election laws with elected officials, rather than judges; just as I vigorously enforce our laws, I will vigorously defend our laws."

 

The photo ID requirement is set to go into effect July 15. 

Additional coverage of the 2020 elections can be found here