Time now to go inside Kentucky politics with two of our faves that need no big introduction Bob Savage, Trey Grayson.

He'll be here on November 5th.

Of course, for election night.

Good to see you all.

We're, what, 17 days away.

And one of the big items that we're talking about in Kentucky is constitutional amendment number two, which we shorthand to refer to, is school choice.

Try this kind of set this up for us.

Tom Loftis did a good piece for the Kentucky Lantern talking about Jeff Yaz, the Pennsylvania billionaire who's pumped in $5 million for constitutional amendment number two.

Who is he and why does this issue matter to him?

Sure.

So Amendment two is designed to give some flexibility to legislators to pass school choice legislation, charter school, public charter schools, vouchers, scholarship opportunity, tax rates.

A lot of things have been done in other states.

Our court struck it down.

So hence the amendment to try to give legislators the flexibility.

These are this is a big national issue.

And Jeff Yass, who is somebody who cares a lot about this issue, has cut some big checks and other donors have cut some big checks.

The K has spent a lot of money to defeat the effort.

It's one of the more high profile.

Yeah, we're just talking off camera.

Bob mentioned there's about 150 constitutional questions across the country.

This is an amendment.

So this is a high profile and it's our biggest issue.

It's also complicated.

And I think that's why on the yes side, you're seeing a lot of money being spent.

The no side has a very kind of concise.

Public dollars for public schools.

That's all they have to really have to say.

That's their argument.

The positive argument, the yes argument is more complicated.

I think Kentucky voters generally start with a no on some of these complicated amendments, as they probably should.

So it'll take more money, more resources to make an argument.

And it's a little bit different depending upon what part of the state in which you live.

Right.

Hence the need to educate the public.

And we know on the know side, the governor and the lieutenant governor have been out and about really talking down this amendment.

And but talk to us in the context of the other 150 ballot questions that will be appearing in ballots across the nation.

Some of those are on abortion or taxes or housing.

We have 100 ballots in Kentucky where I think medical marijuana is a little.

Right.

Yes, completely fascinating compared to a normal ballot in our state to have a seven and a half, $8 million of outside money funding almost all the activity on this race.

Trey, guess the number and we were in shock, you and me, right?

Can't be that much.

But he said 5 to $10 million.

Right.

And a lot of question about it and a lot of people talking about it.

A lot of national interest for sure, because so many other states have moved on this in one way or another.

And as Trey pointed out, just as we were warming up, other Democrat leaders were for charter schools, national leaders over time.

But it's become more partizan.

And that's unfortunate because we're kind of vilifying each group and the advertising and commentary.

And that's not fair to Republicans or Democrats or other people who care a heck of a lot about education.

And so on Tuesday night, we're tracking, of course, the things that are on the statewide ballot, if you will.

But when it comes to medical marijuana, we're going to have to call the Kentucky Office of Medical Cannabis, right?

Yeah.

To track that because they're going to be tracking it that night.

Yeah.

And it's tricky because it's you've got is in some counties like Shelby County, for example, the fiscal court just said we're just putting on on the ballot.

That's right.

And then in some cities the city said no or sometimes you can get petitions.

There's all kinds of different ways you can do this.

And so sometimes it's a city, sometimes it's a county.

And that being said, there's only a couple there's only, what, a couple of dozen licenses at the first in the first go round anyway.

So a lot of communities are going to maybe vote yes and then not get a license approved for a business in their community for a long time, if ever given away.

These are these are not, you know, limited.

Yeah.

See this coming?

I thought we passed a legislative action.

That's it.

Yeah.

But for northern Kentucky communities, councils have voted yes or no already.

Yeah.

It's, it's very different.

Yeah.

There is another amendment that gets no love and we've been shading it out, but we're going to get First Amendment.

And it's the First Amendment of all things said.

You know, if passed, the amendment would add the following Senates to Kentucky's Constitution.

No person who is not a citizen of the United States shall be allowed to vote in the state.

Some say this is a problem in search of a solution.

You agree with that?

Bob Babich Pretty much a solution, Sergeant, for a problem, Pretty much.

I don't want to offend anybody who worked on this.

However, most people say, isn't that already the case?

I mean, can non-citizens vote now?

I don't think so.

And they haven't been.

Not in Kentucky.

Across the country.

There are some communities, some city, some school districts that allow non-citizens to vote.

You can't vote in federal elections.

That's the law.

I don't think you can vote in any state elections that would be subject to state constitutions.

What this does is tries to any kind of a little bit of a light in interpretation that maybe kind of sort of see it.

That's what this is designed to do.

And I think the proponents would say, look, we've seen the Supreme Court strike down some things that we thought were pretty clear cut.

We want to make this ironclad.

And that's the argument for this.

One law passed overwhelmingly and hasn't gotten a lot of attention because at the end of the day, it doesn't do much.

It just restates essentially in a more clear and way the status quo in Kentucky, which is non-citizens can't vote.

And with all the rhetoric around immigration on a national level, we can see where this would be going for Kentucky voters.

Real quickly, next two weeks, can you believe it, that we're so close to November 5th?

And early voting starts on 31st here in Kentucky's costume, where you and my daughters dressing up in a costume want to vote on early voting day.

Can you do that?

Oh, yeah.

Just don't violate electioneering law.

So don't don't wear your hair as a Trump cousin, right?

That's right.

You know, you can be your hair.

Yeah.

It's not fancy farm you're going to fancy far right?

So any October surprise?

What are you looking for?

Well, we've got we only have a handful of competitive legislative races.

Josiah wrote a nice piece this week on the three laws.

There's one in central Kentucky, one in northern Kentucky that Democrats have targeted these five.

There's probably another five that we'll want to talk about on election night.

But we don't anticipate a lot of lot of movement one way or another.

And it's so I think to me, the biggest attention is going could be on this amendment to what we're talking about earlier.

Yeah, you, Bob, for a lot of places, there's not a competitive race for incumbents or or back in.

Yeah.

So it's a very small universe that we're watching.

But all those matter a heck of a lot.

Interest has spiked, I believe, just based on Secretary State Adams reporting the last tranche of voter registrations compared to four years ago, it's three times as many.

And fascinating to look at because one in five registered independent or other, as we call it, that's a lot.

And for every Democrat who registered, there were 15 Republicans.

We've seen a trend, but that's an overwhelming trend in the northern Kentucky counties.

My wonderful colleague Rebecca Hart, so did the research to see that vote can and Campbell, have over 15% independent or other registered there.

So while the state average is ten, it's much higher in northern Kentucky.

Those are folks who've conscientiously said, I reject either party.

I'm not choosing either one.

I'm going to be myself, I'm going to be independent, which is interesting because we think of them as more right leaning or more Republican leaning.

Yeah, Yeah.

Well, well, I would also say that the Democrat number is very small, so the Republican number is still really large, especially in my county of Boone, where I live.

But it effectively means you're not voting for local county officials because you're you don't have a say in the primary.

And all those races are basically settled in the primaries.

Yeah, Yeah, for sure.

We're going to have fun on November 5th.

We really will.

We always have fun, but even more so then.

Yeah, I'll see you guys then.

Have a good one.

Thank you.