Friday, October 19, 2007

207. Getting their second wind - - -

The National Weather Service is now reversing itself and confirming three tornadoes in the Louisville area yesterday, one in town just east of downtown (where I live) along Lower Brownsboro Road (US 42) around 7:00 pm, and two others, one on either side of North Preston Highway (KY 61) north of Shepherdsville and south of Hillview, in Bullitt County. All were ranked at approximately 85 miles per hour, which is at the bottom of their ranking schedule.

As a note, the ones in Bullitt County followed just a little south of the same path taken by a tornado on Primary Election Day, May 28, 1996. That one was much stronger, starting on top of Brooks Hill and sweeping down into the low-lying areas along Blue Lick Creek and I-65 to the east. Many of the polls in that part of the county went without electricity for some time and closed without a number of people being allowed to vote. The law at the time read that those in line at 6:00 pm, the prescribed closing time of the polls, could remain in line but that all voting would cease at 7:00 pm.

Because of the delays that day (some of which were caused by too few machines in particular polls and were totally unrelated to the climactic events), the voting-times law was amended in the 1998 Kentucky General Assembly. The 1998 Kentucky Acts of the General Assembly, Chapter 4, Section 1, rewrote the statutes to allow that anyone in line at 6:00 pm would be allowed to vote before the polls were to be closed, and the polls would remain open until that last person in line at 6:00 pm voted, irrespective of the time. The new law went into effect on February 17, 1998.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Insight is just NOW getting their ducks in a row to make repairs in my neighborhood (Crescent Hill/Clifton/Clifton Heights) where the tornadoes struck.

Just needed to complain after reading this entry. Heh.

The Archives at Milepost 606

Personal

Louisville, Kentucky, United States
Never married, liberal Democrat, born in 1960, opinionated but generally pleasant, member of the Episcopal Church. Graduate of Prestonia Elementary, Durrett High, and Spalding University; the first two now-closed Jefferson County Public Schools, the latter a very small liberal arts college in downtown Louisville affiliated with the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity of Nazareth. My vocation and avocation is politics. My favorite pastime is driving the backroads of Kentucky and southern Indiana, visiting small towns, political hangouts, courthouses, churches, and cemeteries. You are welcome to ride with me sometime.