What if they held an election and nobody voted?

Yes, that is a rhetorical question. This happens in Kentucky pretty much every election cycle. Funny, because the candidates on this year’s ballot-all for state-wide office, by the way-covered pretty much every issue except for the poor turnout pretty much everyone anticipated.

We all know that Kentucky toyed with the idea of doing away with the off-year elections to increase voter turnout, but wound up using the American resolve to convert to the metric system as its model. And we all know how that went, because we all have to buy two sets of tools now.

I believe the logic behind keeping state-wide elections in its off-year spot was maybe to keep local elections from being influenced by the presidential politics. That makes about as much sense as whatever counts as logic behind our switch to the metric system, and I’m pretty sure even the ones came up with that aren’t sure what it is.

Those voters who did turn out did one thing right: They chose Democrat Alice Lundergan Grimes over Republican Bill Johnson for Secretary of State. It seems like Johnson thought too many Kentuckians were voting, as he took up a GOP cause celebre by announcing he would push a bill that would require all voters to have a state-issued photo ID available before they’d be allowed to vote.

Current law requires some proof of identity, but allows recognition of the voter by precinct officials to count. In small rural precincts, this is very often how the system works. People know their neighbors.

In Tennessee, where such a law was passed, it resulted in a 96-year old being denied the right to vote. Okay, it was a technicality, but still, for someone who’s voted almost every time she could, that is hardly comforting news. It does sort of prove a contention many of us have, though, and that is the law is meant not to curb fraud but participation by those who’d vote for the opposition party.

Well, Kentucky doesn’t need such a law to curb participation, now, does it? I mean, we have closed primaries to do that, don’t we? You know the drill, you ain’t registered as a Republican or Democrat, and you ain’t votin’, you know what I mean?

And still, I have to ask the question, why is the Commonwealth of Kentucky required to do the parties’ work for them? Why are we perpetuating two entities that should have no official standing in our state or national constitutions?

Why? Because the two have colluded on laws that ought to be thrown out as unconstitutional; laws that give them preeminence where they should have none.

Don’t look for that to change anytime soon, either. Not only are the two parties content with the status quo; the state legislature is the only way any law can be proposed in Kentucky. Yes, if the Constitution is amended, the voters must approve that, but the voters cannot directly or indirectly propose laws nor have laws enacted by the state assembly put on the ballot for approval or rejection by the voters.

But then again, we don’t allow for recall elections in this state either. And that’s too bad, too; nothing like the prospect of a recall election to get a politician in the listening mode.