Amendment to curtail Kentucky governor’s pardon power wins by large margin

By McKenna Horsley
Kentucky Lantern

Kentucky voters have approved a constitutional amendment to curb governors’ pardon powers around elections.

The amendment won at the ballot box Tuesday by a vote of almost 40 percentage points. The change limits Kentucky governors’ power to grant pardons and sentence commutations around elections by blocking them 60 days before their election through the inauguration in December. 

Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, had repeatedly proposed legislation for the amendment in the General Assembly for several years after former Republican Gov. Matt Bevin issued a flurry of controversial pardons after he lost the 2019 election to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear.

The campaign for the amendment was a quieter affair than others have been in recent years. No issue committees filed to support or oppose the issue. McDaniel sponsored some materials himself and traveled across the state leading up to Election Day to speak in support of the measure. 

“There is no check on the power to pardon, and so we’ve got to get ourselves to the point where there is a check,” McDaniel previously said in an October interview with the Kentucky Lantern. 

Bevin’s pardons were widely criticized. He issued pardons to people convicted of crimes including rape, murder and child abuse. One was for a Northern Kentucky man who had been convicted of raping a nine-year-old the year before. Another was for a convicted killer whose family raised money for Bevin’s campaign.

However, some were wary of changing the Kentucky Constitution because of one person. Scottie Ellis, a spokesperson for Beshear, told the Lantern in June that while Bevin had “abused the pardon authority and let violent criminals out of prison, … the solution should not be to limit a governor’s pardon powers but to ensure we elect good governors.”