Early voting in Kentucky begins Thursday

LEXINGTON, Ky (WTVQ)- One week from Tuesday, Kentuckians will head to the polls for the general election.

While in-person absentee voting with a qualifying excuse continues today and Wednesday, early voting begins later this week.

Voters across the state are casting ballots on all of the major state races. Here in Fayette, County, the ballot includes races for Commonwealth’s Attorney 22nd judicial district,  clerk, and board of education educational division 1 seat.

Clerk Susan Lamb says the office has been hard at work  counting early absentee ballots and preparing electronic poll pads for each of the county’s 125 voting locations.

“It’s a good community because you can trust our process here to be fair and safe and with integrity,” says Lamb.

Early voting is November 2nd 3rd and 4th from 8:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. There are four locations, including the North Side Library, East Side Library, Tates Creek Library, and the Lexington Senior Center.

“You do not need any qualifying excuses, you go in, take your ID, you register,” says Lamb.

Lamb says voting numbers are trending upwards compared to the previous gubernatorial election in 2019.

“We have received 6,643 absentee ballot requests for this election. I looked back in 2019, and its a little more than a 2,000 absentee ballot increase from 2019 the last gubernatorial election, which I thought was a really interested process,” says Lamb.

And with more people voting via absentee ballot, the clerk’s office is expecting a faster voting process.

“The exciting part is that when you go into your precinct on Tuesday, hopefully the lines won’t be as long because people had the opportunity to go to early-voting. But still the ballot is not
as long as it was in November of 2022. So we feel like it will be a quicker process for voting, and hopefully there wont be any long lines,” says Lamb.

The General Election is set for November 7th.