Record voting, a long wait & antsy incumbents: Takeaways from Kentucky's primary election

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Kentucky voters went to the polls for a primary election Tuesday that was transformed by the coronavirus pandemic and the focus of much national attention.

That attention came from the high-profile U.S. Senate race between Democrats Amy McGrath and Charles Booker, as well as concerns about lack of polling places and alleged voter suppression.

In addition to a large majority of the votes being mailed in absentee ballots — a first for a state that had prohibited no-excuse absentee and early voting — this primary is unique because we don't yet know the winner of most races and probably won't until June 30 when all of the absentee ballots are counted.

Here are some of the main takeaways from the still-evolving Kentucky primary:

Still on track for record vote total

While national celebrities and Democratic Party officials spent days warning about possible voter suppression in the state, election officials continue to project that more Kentuckians cast a vote in 2020 than any primary in the state's history.

Secretary of State Michael Adams said Tuesday afternoon he estimated about 1.1 million Kentuckians voted in the primary, with the large majority of those turning in their absentee ballot by mail. 

If that projection turns out to be close to accurate, it would far surpass Kentucky's previous primary election record of 922,456 votes cast in 2008, which featured the still-competitive race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.

Jared Dearing, the State Board of Elections executive director, has projected that about 90% of the 883,000 people who requested a mail-in absentee ballot will mail a completed ballot back in to their county clerk.

Also:Kentucky votes amid COVID-19, suppression claims as late voters are allowed into polling site

Gerth:McGrath's and Booker's freebies at the Kentucky polls just made this election messy

Dearing said Wednesday morning that the unofficial total for in-person voting on Tuesday was 161,238, while the unofficial total for in-person early voting was 110,130.

If Dearing's projections are correct, this would mean that about 75% of Kentucky voters cast their ballots by mail in the primary.

Adams and Gov. Andy Beshear signed executive orders in April amid a high point in the pandemic that delayed the May primary until June 23. In addition, they took unprecedented steps to facilitate voting by mail to reduce the contact of voters with often-older, susceptible poll workers.

However, the decision by county clerks in some of the state's biggest areas such as Jefferson County to consolidate Election Day voting into one large facility started to draw criticism over the weekend by national celebrities such as NBA star LeBron James and politicians including Hillary Clinton.

Without adding the context of the bipartisan effort to boost mail-in and early voting amid the pandemic, social media was filled with posts claiming that 600,000 Louisville voters would fill into the Kentucky Exposition Center on Tuesday and have to wait in six-hour lines to vote, calling it an intentional Republican effort to suppress the vote of the state's largest African American population.

If 90% of the more than 215,000 registered voters in Jefferson County who requested a mail-in ballot turn one in, the county's turnout would surpass its all-time record of 192,630 in 2008, before even counting those who voted on Tuesday or the previous two weeks of in-person early voting.

Also:When will my absentee ballot be counted in Kentucky's primary election results?

Jefferson County Clerk's office spokesman Nore Ghibaudy said 14,800 people voted in person at the exposition center on Tuesday, and 11,111 cast a ballot through early voting at the facility over the previous week. This total does not yet include those who voted early at the office's Edison Center over the previous two weeks. 

Voting went mostly without a hiccup in Louisville and the rest of the state, with the exception of Fayette County — where voters had to wait in line for more than an hour — and the final moments in Louisville.

Jefferson County officials closed the doors to the exposition center at 6:03 p.m. as people were still running from the parking lot to enter and vote before the 6 p.m. deadline to be in line. After more than 50 people gathered outside chanting to be let in and banging on the locked doors, a judge partially granted a request for an injunction by Booker's campaign, letting them in to vote.

It will be a long week of waiting

While a slight majority of Kentucky's 120 counties reported in-person voting results for Tuesday by that night, these totals are very far from final and will not be until June 30, when most counties will reveal the numbers including all mailed-in ballots.

This is the case for the most-watched race in the state, as supporters of Booker and McGrath will spend an agonizing week of waiting until the winner can be determined.

While the results released last night showed McGrath leading Booker by 8 percentage points, this accounted for only 62,000 votes — which is only about 10% of the total number of Democrats projected to have cast a vote when absentee ballots are included.

Kentucky's primary election results:Click here to view the latest information

Over 535,000 Democrats requested a mail-in absentee ballot, according to the State Board of Elections.

No counties have begun to report results from their absentee ballots, and officials from Jefferson and Fayette counties — the two largest counties that will have a major factor in determining who Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's general election challenger will be this fall — have said they will not release those figures until June 30.

State House incumbents in close races

While we'll all have to wait to learn the outcome of competitive primary races, there were some interesting results from the in-person voting on Tuesday that suggest several Republican incumbents in the state House could have a tight race on their hands.

In House District 50 in Nelson County, Rep. Chad McCoy — a member of Republican leadership in the House majority — received slightly less in-person votes on Tuesday than his challenger Donald Thrasher, the unconventional chairman of the county's Republican Party.

McCoy's campaign spent much more in the race than Thrasher, assisted by an outside group who sent mailers alleging Thrasher was a tax cheat. Thrasher — who made headlines in 2004 when he leaked the infamous sex tape of his roommate with Paris Hilton — was outspoken on social media with countering allegations against McCoy, whom he confronted at a legislative committee meeting in Frankfort last year.

While Thrasher's 706 votes from in-person voting on Tuesday slightly edged the 667 of McCoy, over 2,300 Republicans in the county requested an absentee ballot, so these results likely reflect a minority of the district's votes.

Early partial results for in-person voting on Tuesday also show incumbent Rep. R. Travis Brenda trailing Republican primary challenger Josh Bray — who received the endorsement of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce — in House District 71, though this is likely to be a small percentage of the total vote once absentee ballots are counted.

Reach reporter Joe Sonka at jsonka@courierjournal.com or 502-582-4472 and follow him on Twitter at @joesonka. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courierjournal.com/subscribe.