2024 Regular Session - Day 5 - HB 161, Rep. Josh Branscum

House Bill 161 is a bipartisan supported piece of legislation that addresses a potential candidate filing issue that was brought to our attention mid to late last week as you all know KRS chapter 118 requires a candidate filing for office to State his or her precinct number as part of the Declaration in the nomination papers we learned last week that many precincts names and numbers have been changed after the filing window open November 8th due to mandatory reapportionment which I will explain further accordingly this bill states that any changes in Precinct names or numbers due to reapportionment that occur between November 8th 2023 and the final filing deadline of January 5th sh shall not have any impact on the validity of the nomination papers of that particular candidate by way of explanation after each census counties are required by Statute to conduct reapportionment of their District to account for population shifts that may have occurred this is usually done the year after a census after census data is received however as you all remember with the delay in Census Data uh that due to covid uh this reapportionment has been pushed back during reapportionment it is not uncommon to see new precincts established precincts split combined or eliminated and when this happens often times you will see the number and the name of the precinct change which is why we are here today while the process began in 2023 we learned that a large number of the counties have not completed the process only 49 of the 120 submitted their reapportionment prior to the opening of candidate filing and Precinct changes have been ongoing throughout the filing period of November 8th 2023 and January 5th 2024 and they will continue to change as more counties complete the process as I mentioned the nomination papers require a declaration of your Precinct name and number therefore if you are from one of the counties whose information has changed between the first date available to file for office and the filing deadline your Precinct name or number could have changed in that period and would not match the candidate paperwork of course the strong legal support for the fact that the statement of Precinct name and number does not have any constitutional impact on a candidate's bonafides to run for office but that does not stop a legal Challenge from being filed and putting candidates in the position of dealing with lawsuits so the goal of this legislation is to foreclose that possibility this issue could potentially affect Democrats Republicans incumbents and Challengers both the Secretary of State and the State Board of Elections have approved the language and it is specifically intended to have a retroactive effect and an emergency declared this is out of an abundance of caution and we believe this bill with the explicit retroactive effect and the emergency declared provides additional protection to all CL all candidates