In April, the Kentucky legislature passed Senate Bill 216, legislation related to voting that proponents argued would improve the sanctity of elections in Kentucky. However, one of the sections in the bill includes information that allows county clerks to include party affiliation for candidates running in nonpartisan races, such as judicial and municipal races.
Section 11 of the bill reads:
“The county clerk of each county and the Secretary of State shall prominently display on his or her official Web site, the candidates, place of residence of each candidate, and the political affiliation of each candidate, who is on the ballot for any regular election. The posting required of this section shall occur at least fifty (50) days before a regularly scheduled election and forty-five (45) days before a special election.”
Campbell County Clerk Jim Luersen said he started getting calls and emails from concerned citizens when they noticed party affiliation listed for nonpartisan races on the clerk’s website.
“I got like a dozen emails,” Luersen said, adding that a state representative also contacted him.
Luersen’s office reached out to the Kentucky Secretary of State’s Office and was told that the information could be taken down from the clerk’s website, and so it was. The confusion is that the bill doesn’t take effect until July, so it doesn’t need to be on the clerk’s website for this primary election cycle.
It will, however, be in effect for the November general election.
“Our Office has not advised county clerks to advertise the party affiliations of candidates for nonpartisan office,” said Michon Lindstrom, communications director for Secretary of State Michael Adams. “Moreover, Senate Bill 216, which requires county clerks to beef up candidate information on their websites, has not even taken effect yet, and applies to general elections, not to primaries.”
While the bill won’t take effect until later in the year, publishing party affiliation on a clerk’s website for nonpartisan races could have a negative effect on candidates running for these seats, according to Northern Kentucky University Professor and Bellevue City Councilman Ryan Salzman.
“Adding partisan identification to anything that is a one-off from a nonpartisan election could have a very chilling effect on people’s willingness to run in nonpartisan elections, which is troubling, given the low rate of signups for local elections that we have already,” Salzman said.
Senate Bill 216 passed through the legislature was adopted by the Republican supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly earlier this year but was then vetoed by Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat.
The GOP-dominated legislature overrode that veto in the final days of the 60-day session.
“I am vetoing Senate Bill 216 because it reduces transparency in our elections,” Beshear said in his veto statement. “Senate Bill 216 requires candidates for legislative office to file only annual campaign finance reports in years they are not running for reelection.”
While Beshear said that he vetoed it because of the effect the bill would have on campaign finance reports, Salzman believes that the section regarding party affiliation for nonpartisan races is strictly political.
“This is clearly being done for political reasons,” Salzman said. “It’s passed through a Republican legislature over the veto of a Democratic governor, and probably to specifically target judicial races. That would be my guess, that they’re trying to target judicial races, but they’re possibly not thinking about local nonpartisan races as much where the chilling effect could be most effective.”
But, if a candidate is savvy enough, they could just change their party affiliation if they’re worried about partisan identification affecting their candidacy.
“I think the state legislature underestimates people’s strategic retellings and dealings when it comes to signing up for these offices,” Salzman said.
Luersen thinks that a lot of work was done last minute on this bill in Frankfort, and there’s a lot in it that people really don’t know about. With county clerks responsible for implementing these election bills, they are often left to interpret the bills and figure out the logistics of making them work.
“They changed the law without thinking of the practical effects … and we’re the ones who have to figure out what they mean,” Luersen said.
