https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/04/coronavirus-voting-kentucky-primary-348611

National figures from Hillary Clinton to LeBron James warned of impending calamity in the state

NATIONAL FIGURES ARE NOW EXPERTS

Coronavirus has upended elections around the country since the pandemic landed in America, and last month, Kentucky was feared to be the next disaster. National figures from Hillary Clinton to LeBron James warned of impending calamity in the state, focusing on a dramatic decrease in polling places, especially in Louisville.

But after the votes came in, Kentucky earned measured praise from voting rights advocates for how it largely sidestepped the missing ballots, long lines and other problems faced by many states amid coronavirus. The Democratic governor and Republican secretary of state reached bipartisan agreement on a massive expansion of absentee voting, leading to the highest primary turnout in Kentucky since the hard-fought 2008 presidential primary.

Now, voting rights experts say other states should be reaching out to Kentucky for advice, as a potential blueprint for scaling up pandemic-safe voting for the November elections.

“I think Kentucky could be a model for states that have not done a lot of absentee voting prior, or they've had excuse absentee, in terms of scalability,” said Amber McReynolds, the chief executive officer of the National Vote At Home Institute and a former elections director in Denver, Colo., when the state instituted one of the broadest vote-by-mail programs in the country.

Just over 1 million Kentuckians voted in the primary despite the pandemic, the highest primary turnout in the state in 12 years. Roughly 75 percent of the votes were cast via absentee ballot, said Secretary of State Michael Adams. Kentucky's size means the changes they made won't be as easy to scale in some states, especially in a general election scenario, but the primary also went much better than other states' so far this year.