Early voting starts Thursday. Three days, no excuse, bring your ID.

LOUISVILLE — Thursday morning, every registered voter in Kentucky can vote without giving a reason. Three days: Thursday October 29, Friday October 30 and Saturday October 31. No form, no excuse, no list of eleven. After Saturday the doors close until Election Day, and there is no voting on Monday the 2nd.

This is the window most Kentuckians mean when they say early voting, and it is the one that has been doing the work. Last week I wrote about the six excused days that opened October 21. In Louisville those six days drew 3,490 voters in 2024. The three open days drew 112,691.

When. October 29, 30 and 31. Hours are set county by county, at least eight hours a day between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. local time, so check yours. Jefferson County runs 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Warren runs 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. If you are in the western half of the state, local time means Central.

Where. Not necessarily your Election Day polling place. Early voting runs at sites the county picks, and in a lot of counties that is one building: the clerk's office. Larger counties open more. Jefferson has 24 sites. Warren has five, and any Warren voter can use any of them. Your county's sites and hours are on govote.ky.gov, the State Board of Elections' voter portal, under your own registration. Look it up there, not on a flyer.

What to bring. A photo ID with your name on it: a Kentucky driver's license or state ID, a U.S. passport, a military ID, or another ID issued by Kentucky, the federal government, a Kentucky city or county, or a college or university. If you do not have a photo ID, tell the election officer. Kentucky law allows you to vote after signing an affirmation and showing another form of identification, and the officer will walk you through it. You do not need your voter card.

What happens inside. You check in, you get a paper ballot, you mark it and you feed it into the scanner yourself. Voters with disabilities can use a ballot-marking device that prints a paper ballot for the same scanner. It counts the same as a ballot cast on November 3.

Three days. No excuse. Photo ID. Your county's sites and hours are on govote.ky.gov.

If you have a mail ballot. The request portal closed October 20. If you have a ballot at home, it has to be in the clerk's hands by 6 p.m. local time on November 3, not postmarked by then. Mailing it this late is a bet on the Postal Service. Walking it to your county clerk's office is not.

What the three days were worth. In 2024, 656,277 Kentuckians voted in the three no-excuse days, per the Secretary of State. In Jefferson County, the clerk's official precinct recap sheets put the three open days at 112,691 ballots out of 357,876, or 31.5 percent of everything the county cast, an average of 37,564 voters a day.

That was a presidential year. This is a midterm, with the U.S. Senate, six U.S. House seats and all 100 state House seats on the ballot, and a midterm electorate is smaller and older and has fewer first-time voters. The question this weekend is whether the habit holds without a president at the top of the ticket.

What campaigns should do with it. The three days are the cheapest votes on the calendar. Every identified supporter who votes Thursday is one fewer name on the Election Day chase list. Saturday is the day working voters show up, so that is the day lines form at the single-site counties.

What I'm watching: the Jefferson County count after Saturday close. Clear 112,691 in a midterm and Louisville has become a place that votes early on its own, president or not. Come in well under it and Election Day is still where most of this county's votes live. I'll post the clerk's number when it's out.