‘Functionally closed’: Kentucky Democratic Party, ACLU of Kentucky react to delays at Jefferson Co. polls

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - A large amount of early voting data was the cause of technical issues with electronic poll books during Election Day in Jefferson County, according to the Jefferson County Clerk's Office.

Communications Director Ashley Tinius said more than 113,000 people voted during Kentucky's three days of early voting. Tinius said all of the IDs that had been verified during early voting had to be downloaded onto the electronic poll books to make sure early voters couldn't vote more than once, causing them to run slowly in the morning.

"The election supply vendor, from what I understand, there was a server problem and there wasn't enough bandwidth for that file to download quickly," Tinius said in an interview with WAVE.

The delays led the Kentucky Democratic Party to file a lawsuit asking a Jefferson Circuit Court judge to extend polling hours in Jefferson County to 8 p.m.

The lawsuit claimed at some polling locations system crashes prevented poll workers from processing voter check-ins approximately every three minutes for the first three and a half hours of voting. At some points, it claimed, the system needed to be restarted after checking in each voter.

"Hundreds of voters have called reporting issues, scores of voters reported leaving lines early, some even told to come back later when the system's issues were fixed," said Deputy General Council to the Kentucky Democratic Party Rick Adams during a Tuesday afternoon hearing with a judge.

The judge ultimately denied the motion , saying in an opinion the KDP failed to identify the specific precincts that experienced delays and that the Kentucky Constitution forbids the polls from remaining open past 7 p.m.

"We are extremely disappointed by this ruling given the extensive technical issues in Jefferson County, which caused some voters to wait in line for more than three hours," KDP Executive Director Morgan Eaves said in a statement. "Polling locations across Jefferson County were functionally closed. These disruptions weren't just unacceptable — they deprived Kentuckians of the fundamental right to vote."

"Their ability to vote has been compromised," said Corey Shapiro, legal director of the ACLU of Kentucky. "The government itself is to blame here for creating these extensive delays, so we were simply asking the court to rectify that and unfortunately the court disagreed."

The ACLU of Kentucky joined the lawsuit shortly before it went before the judge. Shapiro says there are many reasons that a voter could have been unable to cast their ballot because of the delays, and argued extending the polling hours could have been a chance to rectify the situation.

"They may have childcare obligations, they may be working multiple jobs, they may have had carved out an hour at 6 a.m to 7 a.m to plan on voting," Shapiro said. "The lines we were hearing about and were receiving phone calls about were that the lines were going to take over an hour and a half, two hours and in some cases three hours."