FRANKFORT – The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky today released a study developed by the national Right to Vote Campaign showing that alarming numbers of county and state officials provide inaccurate information to people with criminal convictions seeking restoration of their voting rights.

The ACLU is calling for a change in the Kentucky Constitution to provide automatic restoration of rights.

“This study provides further evidence that Kentucky’s system is seriously flawed and that Kentucky legislators need to move swiftly to ensure that eligible voters are no longer denied their rights,” said Maria Emilia Ramirez, Program Associate of the ACLU of Kentucky.

Kentucky has the dubious distinction of being one of only three states in the nation that permanently disfranchise all felony offenders.  Kentucky’s offenders can only get their voting rights restored through an executive pardon from the governor. In 2004, Governor Ernie Fletcher complicated this already onerous process by requiring applicants to submit a written statement explaining why they want to regain their voting rights and to provide three character references.

Among other things, the study found that:

· 70 percent of those contacted in county clerks offices and nearly 12 percent of those contacted in probation and parole offices either wrongly believed that people who have been convicted of misdemeanors could not vote or they were unsure whether they could vote;

· Nearly 48 percent of those contacted in probation and parole offices did not know if individuals with federal felony convictions could register to vote;

· 36 percent of those contacted in county clerks offices did not know if people on probation or parole were eligible to register to vote;

· Nearly 25 percent of probation and parole offices did not know whether former felons had to re-register when they got their right to vote back; and

· 25 percent of county clerks offices did not know if individuals with federal felony convictions could register to vote.

The study found that these officials were providing faulty information to voters, including claims that restoration of voting rights is automatic after being out of prison for five years, and that people with misdemeanors cannot register to vote.

The study was conducted earlier this year by two graduate students at the University of Louisville’s Kent School of Social Work who were working as interns at the ACLU of Kentucky.

In addition to the alarming statistics, the ACLU raised concerns over comments made by officials, including one clerk’s office employee who told the student researchers that in her county, “we often know who is convicted of a felony and the poll workers may challenge their vote.”

While the probation and parole offices were slightly more likely than the county clerk offices to provide accurate information, the survey results show that employees of both offices cannot answer simple questions regarding restoration of voting rights for people with criminal convictions.

In response to the survey findings, researcher Angela Kruessel said that as a part of or in addition to legislation calling for a constitutional change providing automatic restoration, state legislators should require both County Clerk and Probation and Parole officials to be better trained regarding how and when people who have been convicted of misdemeanors or felonies are eligible to vote.

Such legislation, Kruessel and the ACLU said, would curb the spreading of misinformation to eligible voters.

The ACLU of Kentucky joins a growing number of individuals and organizations throughout the state asking legislators to approve a constitutional amendment in 2006 that would provide automatic restoration of voting rights to the state’s approximately 109,000 disfranchised ex-offenders, a number that includes several military veterans.

“The survey simply confirms that Kentucky needs to get in step with the rest of the nation and recognize that voting is a fundamental democratic right that should not be denied to anyone, certainly not because of official ineptitude,” said Laleh Ispahani, ACLU national’s Felon Enfranchisement Fellow.

Ispahani said that the trend among states is toward extension of voting rights, adding that since 1997, 12 states have made it possible for more people with felony convictions to cast a ballot.  Even the two other states with disfranchisement policies almost as draconian as Kentucky’s have begun to take steps to ameliorate their restoration processes.

The ACLU said Kentucky should follow suit.