“We are Not Conceding this Race by Any Stretch”

After citing multiple reports of voting irregularities, the campaign of Gov. Matt Bevin has requested an official recanvass of the results in Kentucky’s governor election on Tuesday.

Bevin’s political opponent, Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear led Bevin by 5,189 votes after 100 percent of the precincts had concluded and reported their results Tuesday night, following her announcement of a declared victory among supporters. After Beshear’s declaration, Bevin responded in a speech to his supporters that “we are not conceding this race by any stretch,” and pointed to the voting irregularities.

As of 7 pm EST on Tuesday, Kentucky’s Office of the Attorney General fielded 82 complaint calls after the polls opened, in addition to 32 calls received prior to the polls opening. Some of the types of complaints included disrupting polls, electioneering, fraud, voting machines, voter identification and bribery. The counties that received the most complaints were Hardin County with six complaints, Fayette County with 16 complaints, and Jefferson County with 34 complaints.

Kentucky’s General Voter Registration Problems

Last year, Judicial Watch Inc. was victorious in a lawsuit filed against Kentucky for non-compliance with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). Judicial Watch stated: “[T]he practices currently in place in Kentucky do not comply with the NVRA’s requirement that states conduct a general voter registration list maintenance program that makes a reasonable effort to remove ineligible persons from the voter rolls due to a change in residence outside the jurisdiction …”

The lawsuit alleged that 48 counties had more registered voters than citizens over the age of 18, and noted that Kentucky was one of only three states in which active registration rate is actually greater than 100 percent of the age-eligible citizen population.

A year following Judicial Watch’s victory, Kentucky finally mailed confirmation notices to 250,000 voters who are believed to have moved, which is about 7 percent of the names on the Kentucky voter rolls. Voters who didn’t respond to the notices and who don’t vote in the next two federal elections will be removed from the voting rolls.

The original consent judgement for this action was signed in July of 2018, but only just began this year. Democrat Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes’s office was accused of improper delaying the final clean up of Kentucky’s voting rolls by two years, as Kentucky has been behind in completing a resolution.

This story will be updated.