Voters wait Tuesday morning outside St. Paul United Methodist Church in Louisville, where three precincts in the Highlands area vote. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Deborah Yetter)

LOUISVILLE —A Jefferson Circuit judge has denied an emergency request that polls in the county remain open until 8 p.m. because of technical breakdowns in Tuesday’s election that caused hours-long delays in voting at some precincts.

The order by Judge Eric Haner comes just 30 minutes before polls are scheduled to close at 6 p.m. and follows a lawsuit filed by the Democratic Party of Kentucky, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky. “It is the constitutional right of every eligible voter in Kentucky to cast their vote in the election,” said Corey Shapiro, ACLU legal director.?

The decision capped a flurry of legal activity that began after reports of significant delays in voting at some Jefferson County precincts amid major turnout for the election with the presidential race at the top of the ballot.

In a four-page order, Haner said the plaintiffs failed to show anyone was denied the right to vote since “at no time did any of the polling places close.”

Haner also said the request to? keep the polls open two hours later was “disproportionate to anything that occurred.”

And, Haner’s order said the Kentucky Constitution grants the General Assembly, not the court, the power to establish hours for an election.

But he used the order to remind the public that anyone waiting at the polls by 6 p.m. has the right to vote.

The Kentucky Democratic Party initially filed a lawsuit, asking that voting hours in Jefferson County be extended to 8 p.m. to allow more time for voters after computer problems caused delays in Tuesday’s election.

The lawsuit, filed in Jefferson Circuit Court, alleges “system crashes” of “e-poll books” used to verify identities of qualified voters in precincts caused significant delays of up to three hours or more when the polls opened at 6 a.m.

The e-poll books crashed “dozens, perhaps hundreds of times,” causing delays that forced some people to leave without voting, said the lawsuit filed against Jefferson County Clerk Bobbie Holsclaw, a Republican who oversees elections in the county.

It asked the judge to order Holsclaw to keep the polls open an additional two hours to allow Jefferson County residents more time to vote.

Kentucky law requires all voters in line by 6 p.m. — when polls officially close — be allowed to vote, but they must be present at the precinct.

A spokeswoman for Holsclaw did not immediately respond to a request for comment but her office dismissed a similar proposal from Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, a Democrat, earlier Tuesday.

Greenberg had asked on X, formerly Twitter, for Holsclaw to consider extending voting hours. But her office rejected that option in a response posted by WDRB news anchor Hayden Ristevski.

“We have no intention of keeping the polls open later than 6, and we would appreciate if the mayor would refrain from telling us how to do our job,” it said.

“We are very confident that everyone will be able to vote by 6 p.m. today,” it said.

At least two groups, the Democratic Party and the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, said Tuesday they were? considering emergency lawsuits to give Jefferson County residents more time to vote with the presidential election at the top of the ticket.

“After three days of historic levels of early voting, unfortunately the burden now falls to voters to find more time in their schedules to be able to cast their ballots,” said ACLU legal director Corey Shapiro. “We encourage all voters to stay in line so that their voices may be heard.”

Beth Thorpe, communications chair for the Louisville Democratic Party, said Democrats planned legal action after hearing reports of voters waiting two hours or longer, some of whom had to leave.

One included an emergency room physician who waited two hours before having to leave for a 12-hour work shift, which means she will be unable to get back to the polls in time to vote.

“We have been collecting stories,” Thorpe said. “What is unquantifiable is how many people have left who are not going to be able to come back.”

In an affidavit, Logan Gatti, chairman of the Louisville-Jefferson County Democratic Party, said his office had received hundreds of reports of people saying they had been unable to vote.

“The reports consistently indicated that voters experienced wait times of up to and exceeding three hours,” he said in an affidavit filed with the lawsuit.

After the ruling Kentucky Democratic Party Executive Director Morgan Eaves said the judge’s decision not to extend voting hours was disappointing “given the extensive technical issues in Jefferson County, which caused some voters to wait in line for more than three hours. Polling locations across Jefferson County were functionally closed.” She also said that?“instead of fighting for Jefferson County voters, the Republican Party of Kentucky argued in opposition” to giving people more time to vote.

Michon Lindstrom, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Michael Adams, a Republican, said the issue appeared to affect only Jefferson County and was related to equipment not being fully backed up before polls opened at 6 a.m.

“The issue has been resolved,” she said in an email.

Delays in computer equipment used to check in voters and verify their identity appears to have caused the delays, Thorpe said.

The problem appeared to be linked to efforts to back up the system before the polls opened with the names of the thousands of people who cast ballots through early voting. Nearly 800,000 Kentuckians took advantage of early voting, Adams said.

At St. Paul United Methodist Church in Louisville’s Highlands, which houses several voting precincts, voters waited in a growing line Tuesday morning as workers tried to usher them through the process.

“Computer problems,” said one election worker as he checked in voters.

At a couple of Louisville polling locations, the technical problems seemed to have been resolved by early afternoon.

Poll worker Clint McKay said poll workers at the Beechmont Community Center in South Louisville were frustrated with trying to reboot the voter ID machines when the polls opened at 6 a.m. The issues lasted until about 10 a.m. or 11 a.m., he said.

“I was just impressed by how understanding and patient everybody has been,” McKay said. “I haven’t heard anybody that left in frustration.” McKay said a few people decided to vote later in the day after hearing news reports of issues when the polls first opened.

Read the Kentucky Democratic Party lawsuit

Liam Niemeyer contributed to this report.