Voting rights for former felons could be on the line in Kentucky

Much like the last two gubernatorial elections in Kentucky, whoever wins the race this year could determine whether tens of thousands of Kentuckians who have completed a felony sentence will have the right to vote over the next four years.

Kentucky is one of only three states where people convicted of a felony can only have their voting rights restored by actions of the governor, though two blanket executive orders – one of which was rescinded – affected the right to vote for a significant portion of the commonwealth's population over the past decade.

Just before leaving office, former Gov. Steve Beshear issued an executive order in November 2015 allowing at least 100,000 people who had fully completed their felony sentences for nonviolent or nonsexual crimes to file a form to restore their voting rights, which was then promptly rescinded by former Gov. Matt Bevin shortly after he took office.

One of Gov. Andy Beshear's first acts as governor in December 2019 was to issue a similar order to that of his father's that automatically restored the right to vote for at least 140,000 Kentuckians. The number of people who have had their voting rights restored due to the order has now grown to 190,726, according to his administration.

People eligible to have their voting rights restored under the Beshear order must have served their full sentence for a state felony, though it excludes those convicted of violent or sexual crimes, human trafficking, treason, bribery in an election, a felony in another state or a federal felony. Voting rights are automatically restored after a sentence is completed, not requiring the individual to take a proactive step.

Beshear now finds himself in a competitive reelection race against Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, raising questions about whether the Democratic governor's voting rights order could survive a potential Cameron administration.

Asked if Cameron would rescind Beshear's voting rights order if elected, his campaign replied with an emailed statement that was noncommittal.

"As with any major action, Daniel Cameron would want to have a conversation with members of the General Assembly," wrote Courtney Norris, his campaign spokeswoman.

Norris added that "unlike Andy Beshear, Daniel Cameron is focused more on the rights of victims than the rights of criminals."

In response, Beshear campaign spokesman Alex Floyd said in a statement that the governor "is proud of his record standing up for law enforcement and for the right to vote. That's why he restored voting rights for Kentuckians with nonviolent offenses who have paid their debt to society."

But if Cameron did win and decided to rescind Beshear's order, what would that mean for the nearly 200,000 Kentuckians whose rights were restored in the past four years?

Morgan Hall, spokeswoman for the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, said the hypothetical move would not retroactively take away their voting rights, differentiating this situation from 2015, when Bevin rescinded an order that only created a process for many to regain their rights.

Still, roughly 50,000 new individuals have had their voting rights automatically restored under the order up until this week, leaving the likelihood that a similar number of people would be eligible for such a restoration over the next four years, should that order remain in effect.

"The executive order permanently restores voting rights for those who qualify – however, a different governor could rescind the Executive Order, ending the program and denying future nonviolent felons who fully serve their sentence any restoration of voting rights," Hall said.

Felony voting rights have expanded, but many still left out

While a broad coalition of voting rights advocates praised Beshear for his voting rights order in 2019, many of those same advocates have criticized and sued the governor for not going further to extend such rights to roughly 100,000 more.

Additionally, a proposed constitutional amendment that would automatically restore voting rights to nearly all who have fully served their felony sentence – not leaving it to the whims and orders of each individual governor – has repeatedly failed to pass the Kentucky General Assembly over the past two decades.

By the beginning of 2021, the number of Kentuckians whose voting rights had been restored under the Beshear order had increased to 178,397, though just shy of 200,000 were still prohibited from voting, according to a League of Women Voters of Kentucky report. The same report estimated that 127,597 of those still prohibited from voting had completed their sentences, while roughly 70,000 were either still incarcerated or under supervision.

By the time of the group's early 2023 updated report, the number of felons still prohibited from voting had decreased to 161,596, with 92,889 who had completed their sentences still ineligible to have their rights restored under the Beshear order.

Though these numbers have decreased over the past four years, this still amounts to 4.5% of voting-age Kentuckians having no voting rights due to a felony, ranking seventh highest among states. That figure is 11.4% for Black Kentuckians, which ranks eighth highest in the country.

Beshear also has individually issued what are known as "partial pardons" to restore the voting rights of 59 individuals who submitted applications to his office, with 566 of these applications still pending.

The Kentucky Equal Justice Center and Fair Elections Center filed a federal lawsuit against the Beshear administration on behalf of plaintiffs without voting rights, arguing they had set up an arbitrary licensing scheme for restorations, unfairly leaving out those with certain felonies that left them ineligible and subjectively basing individual applications on who they deemed "worthy."

A district court dismissed the complaint, which was then upheld on appeal last month by the 6th Circuit. The plaintiffs have petitioned the full appeals court for a hearing to reconsider the case, and if not successful could petition the U.S. Supreme Court.

Advocates are also still pushing for a constitutional amendment that would automatically restore voting rights to a much broader group – only excluding those convicted of treason, election bribery, or election fraud – but those efforts have gained little traction in the past three years. Such an amendment would have to pass both chambers with at least 60% of the vote and then be approved in a statewide ballot referendum.

A more narrow version of the amendment nearly passed the legislature in 2020, which would have also excluded those convicted of violent or sex felonies and only restored voting rights after a waiting period. The bill passed the Senate and made it all the way to the House floor, with that chamber adding a five-year waiting period, but it never voted on the measure after the COVID-19 pandemic upturned the session.

Cindy Heine, chair of the League of Women Voters of Kentucky's voting rights restoration committee, told The Courier Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, the group is "anxious to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot to provide consistency on this question, versus worrying about changing governors and changing philosophies about restoring voting rights."

Among the criminal justice reform groups advocating for a voting rights constitutional amendment is Kentucky Smart on Crime, a broad coalition of liberal and conservative organizations.

While some advocates may be wary that Cameron would rescind Beshear's order and not support a constitutional amendment based on his campaign's heavy "tough on crime" messaging, it is notable that Cameron was once the spokesman for Smart on Crime before he ran for attorney general in 2019 – a position he took criticism for in his GOP primary this year.

Reach reporter Joe Sonka at jsonka@courierjournal.com and follow him on Twitter at @joesonka.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Felon voting rights could be on the line in Kentucky governor's race