Appreciate the national attention on Louisville's vote. I think it's important to note that condensing in-person voting to (very large) fairgrounds was done in conjunction with daily messaging on expanded mail-in absentee voting. https://twitter.com/AriBerman/status/1274098195648446469

The pandemic primary plan wasn't GOP ratfuckery, the Rep. SOS and Dem. Gov worked together on allowing coronavirus to qualify anyone for absentee mail vote (usually very restricted). Beshear talked about it frequently in his daily coronavirus briefings which Kentuckians do follow

Jefferson County has had about a week of early voting allowed at the Fairgrounds, which is also not usual. (I would love for early and mail-in voting to become standard for us, even after the pandemic.) Could Tuesday still be a disaster? Yes.

It will depend on the number of ballots that didn't make it to homes in time and the number of voters who didn't get the messaging on requesting; those voters could still crowd the fairgrounds polling place on Tuesday, if they can get there.

And all of that said, we might still have record turnout for the Democratic primary via mailed ballots.

Geographically, the fairgrounds are pretty close — not exactly, but close — to the center of Jefferson County. And it still takes too long (an hour+) to get there by bus from a lot of places in Louisville. That's a problem, too.

Kentucky has been a low turnout state in recent memory. It's a late primary by pres. standards & even later this year because of the pandemic delay. It's important to note the baseline is low. High turnout could be from mail vote accessibility, protests, pandemic, #KySen, combo?

All of this is to say, it's been clear for 3 months now that we were going to be between a rock and a hard place on voting this year. All of the polling places I've used in Louisville have always been staffed by people over 65, folks Beshear has fought to keep safe from covid.

Keeping all or even many of Jefferson Co.'s polling places open would have required a longer lead time than they had even with pushing the primary back a month. But the virus isn't going away before November so I'm hoping there's time to do more for the general.

TL;DR — never be complacent about voting access, but also don't jump to generalized panic without considering important local context.

Beshear's briefings being the daily family TV hour for the first two months of shutdown means this is probably the most informed a lot of Kentuckians have been in years (no shade, just ... none of this is normal!) about what state government is doing on a day to day basis.

When talking about Louisville, it's also important to note that Booker is a highly visible state rep., not—especially in the West Louisville neighborhoods in and around his district—a newly recognized option. Louisville's known; energy's been here. Lex might be a different story

Voting access for all, and especially minority-majority precincts in every state, must be protected. And low turnout shouldn't be part of anyone's electoral strategy, it should be seen as the civic embarrassment it is across the board and aisles.

I'm not claiming everything *will* be fine. Clearly "fine" is a ridiculous concept in a state that has had such trouble getting out the vote in a normal year. But also not helpful is deciding it *will* be a disaster. We don't know that yet.

Kentuckians for the Commonwealth — @kftc — does good work if you're looking for somewhere to direct support.

And in conclusion, follow @joesonka on this and other important matters, thanks.