(The preceding article is reprinted from the Saturday, November 21 edition of The News Register, Russell Springs, Kentucky.)

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Thursday, November 17 at 11:30 a.m. it became official. Revive Russell, the committee gathering petitions for legalized alcohol sales in Russell County, turned in more than 2,800 petitions to the Russell County Clerk’s office for verification.

According to rules set to allow for a special ballot, a petition must garner 25 percent of the total number of voters who voted in the nearest previous election, which means the group needed 1,734 signatures.

The process requires that the county clerk’s office scrutinize the petitions before handing them over to the office of County Judge-Executive Gary Robertson who will then set a date for the special ballot measure 60 to 90 days after the petition has been certified. There is no time period required in which the county clerk’s office must have the names certified but the process will be thorough, according to County Clerk Sue Popplewell.

“We’re going to go through them. Every one that’s on the petition, every one of them we have got to go through them and make sure they’re valid,” Popplewell said of the task which will be accomplished by comparing the petition signatures against voter registration rolls.

“Our team at Revive Russell has worked hard to collect signatures from all over the county from a cross section of people who support our initiative; business leaders, community leaders, teachers, law enforcement, political leaders have all come together to say that we want to move this county forward,” said Revive Russell Chairman Tony Brummett.

“So today we start the process to end prohibition in Russell County after more than 80 years. We say yes to improved economic and job growth in this community and we invite everyone to join our proposal and be a part of the special election to make Russell County once again the tourist capital of Lake Cumberland, to stop millions of dollars in lost revenue to Somerset and Danville and surrounding communities and to keep those jobs, and money and tax dollars here in Russell County to provide for our families in the future.”

Providing for ample time for petition verification, the special ballot measure will likely be scheduled somewhere near the end of January to mid-February, 2016.