Secretary of State to Host Mock Primary at Murray State University

Press Release

Office of the Secretary of State

Frankfort, KY

Murray students will have an early opportunity to voice their opinions about the candidates for Kentucky ’s next Governor during a “mock primary” April 12, hosted by the Office of Secretary of State Trey Grayson in collaboration with the Student Government Association.

The actual Kentucky Primary Election to decide party candidates for statewide offices will take place May 22, when most students will have already left campus for summer vacation. The Office of the Secretary of State is working to remind students about the election before they leave their respective campuses for the summer. Murray is one of eight Kentucky universities participating in the mock primary tour, a statewide effort to engage students in the electoral process.

“The primary falls on the cusp of summer and immediately before Memorial Day Weekend, a time when most young people are not thinking about elections,” stated Secretary of State Trey Grayson. “My hope is that in hosting mock primaries, we will increase awareness of the elections and remind college age students that their voices are important.”

From 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m. on April 12, one of the state’s commonly used electronic voting machines will be set up in the Curris Center (Rocking Chair Lounge) for students to cast mock votes in the Democratic or Republican primary. A staff member for the Office of the Secretary of State will be on hand to demonstrate the machine, help first time voters register in their home precincts, and answer questions about absentee voting. It is also a time for students to test one of the new voting machines that began being used in precincts across Kentucky last year.

Grayson directs the Civic Literacy Initiative of Kentucky, a multi-year effort that will determine a strategy for enhancing long-term civic engagement and civic literacy within the Commonwealth. As part of that effort, he released a report, Rediscovering Democracy: An Agenda for Action , that calls upon the state to take tangible steps to increase civic literacy. The report, which details four principle recommendations and scores of additional recommendations, was developed from the work of the Kentucky Workgroup on Civic Literacy and the Civic Literacy Initiative of Kentucky (CLIK).

A focus on the report is increased technology in order to further engage students in the political process. Grayson’s office has an international award-winning website with increased online election services so that information is readily available for Kentucky citizens 24 hours-a-day/7 days-a-week. Grayson is also a pioneer in using popular mediums such as Facebook to make the political system more approachable to young people. During the 2006 election cycle, he created a national Facebook group to remind students to register to vote, request absentee ballots, and to turn out to vote on Election Day.

“Young people often feel that their opinions don’t matter or that their vote does not really count, but there are over 100,000 18-24 year olds enrolled in Kentucky colleges and universities,” said Grayson. “Imagine the collective impact they could have on an election if they all decided to cast a ballot.”