Bill Seeks to Put Restrictions on Voter Registration Drives

Legislation sought by Secretary of State Trey Grayson to put some restrictions on voter-registration drives cleared a House panel on Thursday.

The bill is aimed at groups that pay people to sign up others as registered voters. It would make it a misdemeanor to base the pay on the number of voters signed up, or the number of people registered for a particular political party.

Groups could still pay hourly wages or flat fees to people who sign up registered voters.

The bill drew no opposition and was approved by the House Elections, Constitutional Amendments and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee.

Supporters said the bill was aimed at removing the temptation for voter-registration workers to submit duplicate or fictional registration cards to make more money.

Grayson said the bill was aimed at preventing abuses in voter-registration drives that were reported around the country during the 2004 presidential election.

He said there were reports that groups on both sides of the political spectrum paid people for every voter they registered, or for registrations for a political party.

"We suspect it may have happened in Kentucky, although we don't have hard evidence of that," Grayson told the committee.

The suspicion stemmed from the 15,000 voter registrations that poured in just before the deadline in Jefferson County, he said.

Officials thought that most of the registrations were duplicates of people already registered, he said.

The abuses don't result in voter fraud on Election Day because of other safeguards, but it put a burden on local election officials, Grayson said.

"What we want to do is try to ... keep this abuse from overwhelming the county clerks' offices around the state," he said.

Grayson said he wasn't aware of the Republican or Democratic parties in Kentucky paying people based on the number of people they register.

Another section of the bill would loosen the electioneering ban near polling places during absentee voting in the weeks before Election Day.

The bill would prohibit electioneering within courthouses or other buildings where the absentee voting is taking place.

Currently, the ban also applies to a 300-foot radius outside those buildings during absentee balloting - a provision that would be removed by the bill.

"We thought that was excessive, both on constitutional grounds and also just on a practical ground," Grayson said.