On Tuesday, Democrat Andy Beshear holds a roughly 5,000 vote lead over Republican Gov. Matt Bevin with all precincts reporting, and he appears to have pulled off an upset victory in heavily Republican Kentucky. If Beshear's victory is confirmed, it would set the stage for as many as 140,000 citizens to regain their right to vote.
Kentucky, along with Iowa, is one of just two states that still impose a lifetime ban on voting by anyone convicted of a felony, but the governor has the power to unilaterally restore the voting rights of those who have completed their sentences. Beshear has pledged to do exactly this via executive order for citizens convicted of nonviolent offenses.
Beshear's promise to use executive power to restore voting rights comes after his father, former Gov. Steve Beshear, tried to do the same thing as his own tenure drew to a close in 2015. The elder Beshear issued just such an executive order, only to see Bevin reverse it two weeks after being sworn into office.
Bevin is facing ongoing litigation over how rarely and arbitrarily he’s restored individual voting rights during his term. That's left Kentucky with one of the highest rates of disenfranchisement in the country, banning one out of every 11 adults from voting. That figure includes roughly one in four black adults, the highest such rate of any state.
Andy Beshear's proposal would still leave most citizens convicted of violent felonies permanently disenfranchised, making it less far-reaching than a similar system of executive orders that Democratic governors of Virginia have used since 2016 to make rights restoration automatic upon completion of any felony sentence. However, Beshear's plan would still strike a major blow against the lifetime ban that Bevin and Republicans have revived and refused to reform, potentially restoring the voting rights of half or more of those citizens who are currently deprived of their political voice.
