Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams
Voters cast ballots Nov. 4 at the Clifton Recreation Center in Cincinnati, but voters across the Ohio River in Kentucky did not have an Election Day.

Some voters in Kentucky called state and local officials Tuesday demanding to know why their polls were closed on Election Day.

They got a quick answer: Because Tuesday was not Election Day in Kentucky.

By late morning, the complaints had been coming in steadily enough that Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams took to social media to remind his fellow Kentuckians that they weren't, in fact, missing anything.

No mayoral or city council races. No state or congressional races. No tax proposals, school levies or ballot issues.

"We're getting calls about polls being closed," Adams wrote on X. "They are closed because we do not have elections today."

He also suggested, with a little sarcasm, that high-profile races in other states may have caused some of the confusion.

"You cannot vote today in Kentucky for the mayor of New York City or the Governor of Virginia. Sorry."

Why doesn't Kentucky have an election?

Snark aside, it is a bit unusual for an entire state to have no elections on a traditional Election Day. In Kentucky, the non-Election Day is the product of a quirk in state law that voters approved more than 30 years ago.

Adams explained in a statement to the Lexington Herald-Leader that the 1992 vote created a constitutional amendment giving the state a year off from elections once every four years.

The amendment gave local officials elected in 1993 a one-year extension to their four-year terms. From 1998 on, they have been elected in midterm elections, along with Congress and the General Assembly, rather than in an odd year.

In an X post about an hour after his first post Tuesday, Adams expressed some exasperation that he's still explaining the change three decades later.

"Have I mentioned my repeated call for civic education," he wrote.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Why are polls closed in Kentucky? Because there is no election today.

Reporting by Dan Horn, USA TODAY NETWORK / Cincinnati Enquirer

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect