On April 12, Kentucky legislators adopted a prohibition on ranked-choice voting (RCV) in the state by overriding a veto from Gov. Andy Beshear (D). The new law makes Kentucky the sixth state to ban RCV, and the sixth to do so since 2022. Kentucky is the first state to adopt such a law with a divided government. The other five states had Republican trifectas at the time of adoption.
House Bill 44 changes several areas of election law, mostly related to voter list maintenance, including requiring an annual report on “voter registration records cleanup activities,” and stipulating that voters may only be contacted about their registration by mail. Legislators added the portion of the bill that bans RCV as a senate amendment, prohibiting the use of RCV for local, state, and federal elected office in the state.
In his veto message, Gov. Beshear did not mention the bill’s actions on ranked-choice voting. He focused instead on a technical aspect of a new list maintenance requirement included in the bill. The bill requires the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to annually provide “lifetime Kentucky death records” to the state board of elections. In the message, Beshear wrote that such records did not exist, that the board is provided with monthly death records under current law, and that, “(t)herefore, House Bill 44 is not necessary.”(Source)
