A 62-year-old Shepherdsville man is facing nine felony charges after a Franklin County grand jury accused him of registering to vote five separate times despite being a convicted felon, then casting illegal ballots in three different elections. Jeffery Woodard was arrested Wednesday, and a judge set his bond at $25,000.
The grand jury indicted Woodard on five counts of wrongful registration, three counts of convicted-felon voting and one count of being a persistent felony offender in the second degree, according to wkyt.com. Investigators allege Woodard unlawfully registered to vote on five occasions between 2023 and 2026, despite his status as a convicted felon barring him from the voter rolls.
According to the indictment, Woodard illegally cast ballots in the November 2023 and November 2024 general elections, as well as the May 2026 primary, reports WHAS11. The attorney general's office said Woodard was previously convicted of using a minor in a sexual performance and possessing material depicting a sexual performance by a minor, according to WKYT; those convictions are the underlying felony record cited in the wrongful-voting allegations.
Charges Carry Felony Penalties Under State Law
Kentucky's wrongful-registration statute makes it a Class D felony for a person to cause himself to be registered when he is not legally entitled to register, according to the Kentucky General Assembly. Knowingly voting as a convicted felon is a Class D felony, while voting in a primary while unqualified is a violation, not a Class D felony.
Attorney General Russell Coleman's office announced the indictment, the same WKYT report states. Coleman has previously urged Kentuckians to report suspected election-law violations to the attorney general's election fraud hotline at (800) 328-VOTE, which also accepts reports online.
Case Lands Amid Broader Election-Integrity Scrutiny
The Kentucky attorney general's office has jurisdiction to investigate and enforce election-law violations through both civil and criminal means under KRS 15.243, according to the Kentucky Attorney General. That authority has been exercised broadly in recent years: detectives from the attorney general's Department of Criminal Investigations completed inquiries into election processes in 12 randomly selected counties following the 2024 general election, as reported by Spectrum News 1. Coleman said no credible election-law violations were found statewide during that 2024 review.
Still, the volume of complaints the office fields each cycle is substantial. Around the November 2024 election, the attorney general's office received 725 complaints about potential irregularities, including 348 on Election Day alone, LPM reported. More than 100 of those complaints involved procedural or legal questions, while 79 concerned voting machines and 55 involved electioneering, according to the outlet's tally.
Not an Isolated Case in Kentucky
Felon-voting prosecutions have surfaced elsewhere in the state in recent years. Seven Kentuckians were convicted of election crimes after a hotline tip concerning the 2022 primary election, Spectrum News 1 reported separately, and a prior case involving an alleged scheme to win a Republican primary for jailer in Monroe County also traced back to a 2022 hotline tip, per LPM's reporting.
A comparable case emerged in Kenton County last year, when a Kenton County grand jury indicted 51-year-old Thomas Dennis III of Covington on multiple counts of wrongful registration and perjury, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Dennis, also a convicted felon, was accused of illegally registering to vote three times between 2006 and 2020 and of falsifying voting-related records to mislead county officials, the paper reported.
