♪ Kentucky is one of just 3 states that KET felons from regaining the right to vote.

If they aren't pardoned or have their records expunged.

The League of Women Voters of Kentucky wants to change that.

They met in Frankfort last week to call on lawmakers to pass a bill that would amend the state's constitution and let voters decide voting rights should be restored once a person sitting in saying is complete.

>> And tracking data on this issue since 2006, Kentucky is falling behind.

So we are only one of 3 states that continues to disenfranchise people who have been convicted of any felony.

That support function on on on how we are making sure that we are getting everyone for participating in our government in terms of the number of Kentuckians who are still denied the right to vote 153,000, 618.

There have been 190 4,000, 161.

Kentuckians who have regained their right to vote to the executive order that was filed in 2019 again, the executive order.

it's a wonderful, a stopgap measure that it's in place right now.

But it is not permanent to to know that the role of the people who are directly impacted is vital in terms of the strategy communicating outreach and just kind of the spirit and the heartbeat of a movement like this.

>> Right.

So what that meant for us was myself and other other people who have been through the system.

We're sitting at the decision-making table and helping to develop the strategy and helping to the communicators.

Our goal was simply to try and humanize us.

We want to I'm not somebody I want you to think about the loved one.

You have been to the criminal justice system is nobody who doesn't know somebody who's been impacted by the criminal justice system.

And people ask me when when that I know we were going to win when that's all I heard.

All I heard was all I'm gonna go vote in November for my son in law, for my daughter, from my aunt.

I'm gonna vote for that person.

Lives up the street that the conversation with instead of this is a proxy vote for governor or this is my political party or my organization.

But it was it was a very human moment.

>> We have to know and understand that our justice system, it's a process.

And if our justice system says that someone has completed that time and they're in our community, we are as as citizens we as elected to need to know and understand that they are neighbors.

They're paying taxes of that.

They are back in our communities.

And so their voice matters just like everybody else's vote.

>> State senator, cut your hair and you just saw has filed Senate bill 225.

It proposes amending Kentucky's constitution to automatically restore voting rights for people convicted of some felonies.

The bill is waiting to be discussed in committee.