Clerical error stopped Democrats from voting in narrow primary, Jefferson clerk says
LOUISVILLE — Jefferson County Clerk David Yates says “a clerical error by a former employee” prevented eight voters from casting a ballot in the 44th House District during Kentucky’s May primary.
In that race, incumbent Rep. Beverly Chester-Burton, D-Shively, lost by five votes to Democratic challenger Kenya Wade. No recanvass was requested.
Yates wrote in a Tuesday letter to Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg five of the eight voters affected were registered Democrats. The clerk said that a 2021 “clerical error by a former employee” led to 30 registered voters in the 4800 block of Red Dawn Drive “being assigned to the incorrect precinct.” Only eight of those voters participated in the primary but “were unable to cast a ballot” in the 44th House race. They were also unable to vote in another House race, Yates said.
Yates also wrote in his letter that voters on that block who registered to vote or changed their registration since 2021 “would have been properly assigned and voted correctly in the recent primary.”
Yates answered questions from reporters for more than 40 minutes about the issue Wednesday morning. He said his employees often have to manually key voter information to check for issues into a “glorified spreadsheet.” Yates said that the system needs to be updated.
The clerk said the state legislature previously passed a law moving voter information to a GIS system that would automatically update voter information when they change their address or register to vote, but “that has not been funded.”
“This isn’t just about Jefferson County. I’m going to go through line by line, house by house and audit and make sure everything is true or correct. We can do that, but this is a bigger issue, and the reason I’m doing this is because it’s not fair to the other counties,” Yates said. Jefferson is the largest county in the state.
Yates said counties’ voter registration systems should be “digitalized, and it needs to be shared throughout the Commonwealth.”
A Louisville Public Media investigation found that voters from more than 1,800 households may have cast incorrect ballots due to an error by the clerk’s office after 2022 redistricting. Yates said in his press conference that he was grateful to LPM for its questions and constituents that called his office about issues with their ballots.
As of June, Jefferson has 584,215 registered voters. Yates said his office will be reviewing about 586,000 houses to verify their precincts. Now, employees are flagging issues they see. Sometimes, a streetview in the system will say information is correct, but individual houses show mismatched information.
In his letter to Greenberg, Yates said he has been “made aware I inherited long standing errors with regard to voter precinct assignments.” After “additional discrepancies” during the primary election, his office began a comprehensive internal audit of voter precinct assignments across the county. The audit has been expanded for all county precincts.
“I appreciate the trust placed in our office and want this effort to serve as a clear demonstration of our administration’s unwavering commitment to election integrity and transparency,” Yates wrote.
Yates, a former state senator, was appointed by Greenberg to fill an unexpired term as county clerk in October 2025 after the death of longtime Republican County Clerk Bobbie Holsclaw. Yates won his primary in May and will not face a Republican this fall.
“We’re grateful to Clerk Yates for his transparency in addressing what appears to be a longstanding, unknown error,” said Matt Mudd, a spokesperson for Greenberg, in a statement Wednesday. “It’s important to get this right and make sure that every citizen of Louisville gets to participate in the elections they’re entitled to participate in.”
Speaking to reporters, Yates said he did not know the cost of the audit at this point, but most of his office’s resources have been directed to completing the audit ahead of the November election.
In an email to the Lantern, State Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Sellers said the timeframe under state law for post-election challenges has past. The board will work with Jefferson County “to make sure all of their voters are properly coded in their correct precincts before the general election in November,” she said.
Sellers added that this “specific fact pattern is not something that has occurred in other counties” in her seven years with SBE. She said the way the current Voter Registration System (VRS) works makes it so county clerks must “use the system to manually assign the voter to the proper precinct” once they register to vote.
“The state has funded GIS technology to provide us with highly accurate maps to identify where a voter lives, but we have not seen any funding to integrate the mapping technology with the Voter Registration System,” Sellers said. “The State Board of Elections is working with the Kentucky County Clerks Association to seek this funding from the General Assembly.”
This story has been updated with additional comments.