23 percent of Whitley County voters cast their ballots through early in-person voting

When it came to voter turnout last week, Whitley County voters could have done better.

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

According to the Whitley County Clerk’s Office, which oversees elections in Whitley County, about 30.5 percent of registered voters went to the polls to cast their ballots for governor and other statewide offices during the 2023 November General Election.

By comparison, during the last governor’s race four years ago in 2019, about 38 percent of Whitley County’s registered voters went to the polls to cast their ballots.

So what accounted for the higher turnout four years ago?

I think that a couple of things were at play here.

First, there was incumbent Gov. Matt Bevin, who four years ago was a bit of a political lightning rod. Among others, Bevin ticked off Kentucky public teachers in large numbers seemingly all but daring them to try and vote him out of office. Most that I talked to, including some teachers who had never voted for a Democrat in their life, seemed happy to oblige him.

The second thing is that this year’s gubernatorial candidates, incumbent Democrat Andy Beshear and Republican Daniel Cameron, weren’t really candidates that too many people really hated and couldn’t wait to go vote against. Generally speaking, both men were likable, but I don’t know that either candidate was all that beloved by voters either.

Whitley County voters threw their support behind Cameron in the governor’s race with a vote of 5,540 compared to 2,697 voters for Beshear. Beshear was victorious statewide though with about 53 percent of the vote to Cameron’s 48 percent.

While Whitley County voters didn’t overwhelmingly turnout to vote this month, it is interesting to take a look how voters cast their ballots. A total of 8,283 people voted in Whitley County, but 1,948 cast their ballots in-person during three days of early voting rather than on Election Day, which is about 23.51 percent. Whitley County Clerk Carolyn Willis kept the polls open for 12 hours on two of those three days of early in-person voting.

I think this shows that by and large Whitley Countians, like most people, like early voting. Hopefully, the state will make early voting permanent and possibly expand beyond three days.

Ideally, I would love to see 100 percent of eligible voters be informed about the races and 100 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots. (Yeah, it’s a pipe dream, but it is my pipe dream…LOL.)

In case anyone is interested, this year 38.07 percent of registered voters cast their ballots statewide during the 2023 November General Election.

Now to touch on a couple of other topics before I conclude this column.

• I only made it to one Veteran’s Day ceremony Friday morning, but it was a pretty good one put on by the Whitley County High School JROTC among others at the school. They always do a good job with this one.
• Monday morning, I traveled up to the road to London for The Center for Rural Development’s announcement that $30.7 million has been secured for a broadband extension in 16 counties, including Whitley, Knox, Laurel, McCreary and Bell counties. The expansion will provide broadband service to about 33,000 unserved households in these 16 counties. As the pandemic proved, this region really needs some help when it comes to high speed internet, which any more isn’t so much of a want as it is a need. Glad this is happening.