By Cindy Schroeder
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Three voters who say Kentucky's two-minute voting rule was applied unequally to African-American voters in a Kenton County precinct on Election Day have complained to the NAACP's national voter fraud hot line.

A representative of the national NAACP office told Kentucky officials of the complaints on Tuesday afternoon. Because the anonymous complaints provided few details, the Kentucky attorney general's office and the state board of elections took no action. However, an employee of the state board of elections alerted Kenton County Clerk Bill Aylor to the complaints on Election Day.

"We spoke with the Kenton County clerk and informed him of the information we had received," said Sarah Johnson, assistant director of the Kentucky Board of Elections. "We told him that as he talked to his precinct workers throughout the day, he should remind them that if the two-minute rule was used, it should be applied equally to all voters."

Mr. Aylor said that he had received no complaints from any voters, including African-Americans, about the possible violation of the two-minute voting rule.

"I don't consider it a problem because it's, quite frankly, baloney," he said.

Kentucky's two-minute rule allows poll workers to limit voters to two minutes in the voting booth, if other people are standing in line to vote.

"The two-minute rule has been in place for some time," Ms. Johnson said. "With a big ballot in a general election, there have been times across the state where it's had to be enforced."

Mr. Aylor said poll workers are told at elections school to encourage voters to read the sample ballot before entering the voting booth. "Some poll workers may be a little more forceful than others about telling voters about the time limit, but I'm not aware of any problems," he said.

Ms. Johnson said the only details the NAACP representative could provide were that one complainant was white and two were African-American. Without knowing other details, such as which precincts the alleged offenses had occurred in, state elections officials could do nothing.

Jeri Jones, a spokesman for the NAACP's national office in Baltimore, Md., said that the organization's voter fraud hot line would continue operating through today. She said information is still being compiled from the hot line, and she could not provide details on any complaints.

E-mail cschroeder@enquirer.com