Albany and Clinton County will continue to be a “dry island” where the sale of alcoholic beverages is concerned, after a petition seeking to get the question placed on the ballot failed to have enough valid signatures.

Clinton County Clerk Nathan Collins told the Clinton County News on Monday of this week that he had completed the task of certifying the signatures on the petitions that had been placed in several locations, and the total number of valid signatures had not reached the 1,070 needed.

Collins noted that in order for the question to have been placed on the November general election ballot, there would have had to have been an amount of signatures equal to 25 percent of the votes cast in the previous general election.

The clerk, in his official notification regarding the certification process, explained that the petition only contained 778 signatures that were found to be a “constitutionally qualified voter” according to Kentucky State laws.

The petition, which was turned in to Collins’ office on Friday, September 9, 2022, had several hundred signatures ruled insufficient for various reasons, including: 256 signatures that did not include an address and/or year of birth, which is required by Kentucky Revised Statutes; 237 signatures ruled insufficient due to not being registered voters of Clinton County; 33 signatures ruled insufficient due to the same voters signing multiple times.

“I hereby certify that the petition lacks an adequate number of qualified signatures required to place the question on the November General Election ballot,” Collins noted on the letter of certification given to the Clinton County News.

Currently, only 10 of Kentucky’s 120 counties are dry counties, in that the sale of alcoholic beverages are prohibited within their boundaries.

In addition to Clinton County, the other dry counties are: Menifee, Elliott Morgan, Leslie, Knott Casey, Monroe, Allen, and McLean counties.

All of the counties bordering Clinton County are wet with alcohol sales being allowed, including Cumberland, Russell and Wayne counties in Kentucky, and Pickett County to the south in Tennessee.