Me watching outsiders ignore Kentucky's already massive turnout on the mail-in & in-person absentee fronts. Also, @GovAndyBeshear is not the elections officer - that'd be @KYSecState.

That doesn't mean there shouldn't be more polling locations in Louisville & Lexington.

It DOES mean turnout is already massive & it sends a strong signal that Trump Republicanism is potentially endangered. Also means there will be relatively few people voting in-person on Tues.

This situation was the bipartisan compromise in order to prevent people from dying of COVID-19 & it's been hugely successful. Lexington's absentee requests alone doubled turnout from 2016.

There is no reason people yet to vote cannot be accommodated tomorrow & Tuesday. None.

Instead of hundreds of thousands showing up? It's gonna be a few thousand in the worst case scenario. Far fewer than some precincts in Louisville see in total on a normal election day.

This effort has gone on for months. On a daily basis. Probably the most officially-communicated-about primary election in Kentucky history.

Yes, there should be a couple dozen polling locations in Louisville. But quit acting like there's widespread voter suppression at this moment in Kentucky. There is not. Usually? Yes, there is. But right now? Not the case.

More ballots have already been counted in Lexington than there were votes cast there in 2016. I'd say that's flipping huge news. Nearly 50,000 ballots there remained outstanding/yet to be counted as of Friday.

People like me (gay folks who grew up in bigoted, rural parts of the state) are not supporting voter suppression when we tell you what's going on in our state. We're here. We see it.

175,000+ Kentuckians also had their voting rights restored. If they registered to vote, then that's potentially going to change the effing world here come November.

On top of mail-in ballots... Louisville's in-person voting locations have been in/near black neighborhoods - easily 15mi closer than in my white neighborhood. Since June 8. It's now June 21. We've had more extended early voting than ever before in Kentucky.

Again - this does not excuse the lack of polling locations in Kentucky's largest cities. That's absurd, racist, classist & probably illegal.

Can't have that discussion w/o recognizing that most people have already voted, however.

If you're an outsider (who supports flipping McGrath, no less) telling me I'm racist for telling you what's actually happening on the ground here? You can get rekt.

Because things are changing in Kentucky. Quickly. And @Booker4KY has a legitimate chance to win. That wasn't the case just a month ago.

Any extra in-person turnout tomorrow & Tuesday will be the cherry on top.

Regardless of results, November will be wild on the turnout front.

And there will likely be tons of polling locations come November. In addition to mail-in/absentee. That's not a mistake Fayette (D) & Jefferson (R) County Clerks are going to make again.

Finally, we are not all backward. We are not like Georgia - right now, anyway. We have a competent governor for the first time in a long time - he isn't racist & actually says the word "gay" out loud. His own dad regularly dismissed black people & couldn't say "gay" out loud.

Even our backward, probably racist Secretary of State (elections officer) pushed for mail-in voting & increased early voting. There has been little to no voter suppression. It's been so reliable people like me have been openly skeptical & straight-up suspicious.

To make sure we don't have anything resembling widespread voter suppression tomorrow & Tuesday, you can make help ensure people in poor & underserved areas have rides to the polls if they need to vote in-person. Via parties, campaigns & orgs that focus on those efforts.

If you know there are people in black neighborhoods in need of assistance to vote, DO SOMETHING TO GET THEM TO THE POLLS! If you know people in rural areas in the same boat? Help them. Make it happen.

This is Kentucky. We have remarkably terrible turnout in primary elections. We're blowing our past out of the water at the moment. It's impressive in a way I can't articulate. November is likely to leave us reeling re: turnout alone.

Don't have to take my word for it. Put in your own effort here: https://elect.ky.gov/results/Pages/default.aspx & fire up yer googler to find news reports about turnout so far in 2020.

I got one of those #s wrong. It's more than 42,000 outstanding. Not nearly 50,000. Should have remembered that because I tweeted that very statistic - with a screenshot, no less - just last night. HEAD-DESK. My fault.

https://twitter.com/cattleprod/status/1274465050489769985

I also addressed concerns about voter fraud in a response thread on a conspiracy theorist's tweet yesterday. Here's a link to that. It has even more numbers if you don't want to check the Board of Elections site yourself. https://twitter.com/cattleprod/status/1274435088806281224

May have to scroll up/down a bit on that last link to Abramson. But the link should still work to get you to the thread.

Since an outsider asked who I am: Kentucky's first(?) out gay journo. I have checked McConnell & the good old boy establishment in KY - while publicly calling out racism & IDing racists - for 20+ years. I am that bitch.

Vote these bigots out. Repubs, Dems, all of em. DO IT!

UPDATE: More than 50,000 absentee ballots have now been counted in Lexington. 7K more than I said earlier. Turnout in 2018 was only 57K there. There are still tens of thousands of absentee ballots outstanding in Lex. This is remarkably good news.

Something we should probably keep in mind: with so many outstanding ballots (maybe 40%?), it's still entirely possible that Charles Booker could beat Amy McGrath. No reason for his supporters to feel discouraged yet.

Many Kentuckians wisely waited to vote for this very reason.

Here's a brief thread with screenshots of turnout data for Kentucky's two largest cities in 2016 and 2018. Should help calm nerves a bit. https://twitter.com/cattleprod/status/1274844299994320897

The Secretary of State just announced that as of this weekend: another 88,507 Kentucky voters had already voted early in-person. That's in addition to vote-by-mail.