The Kentucky Secretary of State’s office reported that voter registration is significantly up in the Commonwealth since the May 18 Primary.  “We are very excited to have so many new Kentucky voters for the upcoming election,” said Secretary Trey Grayson.

Numbers compiled by the Secretary’s office confirm that there has been a net increase of 87,693 voters since the Spring Primary, compared to only 52,372 during the same period covering the presidential election season of 2000.  That’s a 67 percent increase in new voter registration. Overall in this period, 112,897 voters filed voter registration cards, but many simply updated address changes and the Secretary’s office also needed to purge the rolls of deceased voters and those who had moved out of state.

Registration breakdown by party had Republicans gaining 45,408 voters, Democrats gaining 34,825 and “other” categories gaining 7,460.  Even with the sizeable increase for the Republicans, they trail the Democrat’s who are 58 percent of the registered electorate.  After these new additions, Kentucky’s overall registered voters total more than 2.79 million.

Observers anticipate a good turnout on Election Day because the passion to get registered is most often carried over into the process of actually going to the polls and voting.  This is good news for Kentucky, which, like many states, has been plagued with voter apathy and relatively poor turnouts.

Why the passion?  Grayson suspects much of it is due to the Marriage Protection Amendment. “We find that much of this increase is a result of the active registration activities from both the supporters and the opponents of the Constitutional Amendment question that will appear on the ballot this fall,” he said.

“It is my hope that this large increase in registrations will result in a large turnout on Election Day,” Grayson said.

How will these rising numbers affect the Nov. 2 election?  That’s anybody’s guess, but we will have our answer in the next few days.