The number of registered voters in Kentucky has declined significantly since 2020.
Kentucky's Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams says the number of registered voters across the Commonwealth has dropped due to a combination of factors, including a high number of voters being removed from state rolls which has overshadowed new voter registration.
The Kentucky Board of Elections removed 231,110 ineligible voters last month in compliance with federal and state law. Those voters were removed due to death, felony convictions, moving out of state, being judged mentally incompetent, or by being inactive.
Adams said maintaining accurate voting records has been supported by both Republican and Democrats lawmakers in Kentucky.
"I don't think either party wants to have records that are out of date that don't reflect the current reality of who lives in the state," Adams said. "It's just not in anyone's interest to have inflated rolls. I think whatever your party, that's not a good look and you don't want that to happen."
The Commonwealth has roughly 121,000 fewer names on its voter rolls than it did in 2020 when Adams took office, despite Kentucky’s rising population during that time. The Secretary of the State says that of the 231,110 voters removed, the vast majority—225,311— were inactive. A voter is considered inactive if, after two federal elections, they do not vote, they do not respond to change-of-address requests, and they do not respond to requests to update their voter information.
Adams said Kentucky's list of registered voters had not been previously maintained, which led to inflated numbers.
"To be blunt, the reason is that the voter rolls were inflated," Adams said. "That was the conclusion of a federal judge who looked at this. There was an organization who sued the Secretary of the State at the time and so this went through the court process. The state just didn't follow the law at the time."
In 2018, under federal guidance,Kentucky established a program to ensure compliance with the National Voter Registration Act in an effort to update and maintain the voter registration statewide.
Since taking office in 2020, Adams said the state board of elections has had to "play catch up" to update the voter rolls.
"There's also state law that was enacted in the mid-90s after the federal law to basically enable the Commonwealth to comply with the federal law and unfortunately this office did not follow that law for several years," he said.
Statewide, Republican registration accounts for 47% of the electorate, Democrats hold 42%, and other political affiliations make up 11% of the electorate.
