Effective November 15, 2005, Kentucky started tallying people who register as members of certain minor parties. Kentucky has always let people register in any group, since the voter registration form asking “party membership” has a blank line. But in the past, people who registered anything other than Republican or Democratic were coded as “other”. Now, a separate tally will be kept for “Independent status”, “Libertarian”, “Green”, “Constitution”, “Reform”, and “Socialist Workers”.

The new system only applies to voter registration forms filled out on or after November 15, 2005. So anyone who is already registered as a member of a minor party, and who wishes to be coded correctly, must re-register. It is likely that the number of registrants in each of these minor parties will be extremely small for some time to come.