Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams took to social media Tuesday to assure the state’s worried voters that they are not missing out on anything, even though polling places are closed.
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- Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams said his office had received complaints about the closed polls.
- He assured voters on social media that there was no candidate or issue to vote for.
- A quirk in Kentucky law means that voters in the state skip elections once every four years.
Some Kentucky voters called state and local officials Tuesday to ask why polls were closed on Election Day.
They answered immediately. “Because Tuesday was not Election Day in Kentucky.”
By late morning, as the complaints were steadily coming in, Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams took to social media to remind fellow Kentuckians that they weren’t actually missing anything.
There are no mayoral or city council elections. There are no state or parliamentary elections. There are no tax proposals, no school levies, no voting issues.
“I’ve been getting calls saying the polling places are closed. There’s no election today so the polling places are closed,” Adams wrote to X.
He also suggested, with some sarcasm, that high-profile races in other states may have caused some of the confusion.
“You can’t vote for the mayor of New York or the governor of Virginia today in Kentucky. I’m sorry.”
Why aren’t there elections in Kentucky?
Snark aside, it’s a bit unusual not to have a statewide election on the traditional Election Day. In Kentucky, non-election days are the product of a quirk in state law that voters approved more than 30 years ago.
In a statement to the Lexington Herald-Leader, Adams explained that the 1992 vote enacted a constitutional amendment that gave the state a one-year reprieve from quadrennial elections.
Under this amendment, local officials elected in 1993 had their four-year terms extended by one year. Since 1998, it has been elected in midterm elections, along with the Congress and the General Assembly, rather than in odd-numbered years.
In an X post about an hour after his initial post on Tuesday, Adams expressed some exasperation that he was still explaining the changes 30 years later.
“Did I mention my repeated calls for civic education?” he wrote.
