Kentucky Tonight hosted the third in a series of discussions about the 2023 primary elections as Renee Shaw spoke with Michael Adams, a Republican running for reelection as Secretary of State.
A McCracken County native, Adams is an attorney who specializes in election law. He has worked for the U.S. Department of Justice under President George W. Bush, Sen. Mitch McConnell, and former Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher. He was first elected Secretary of State for the commonwealth in 2019.
“You really can’t look at any other period in Kentucky history where we’ve accomplished so much on the election front as we have,” says Adams. “We’ve done more in three years than our predecessors did in two centuries.”
The Republican primary for Secretary of State also includes Stephen Knipper of Independence and Allen Maricle of Lebanon Junction. They did not meet KET’s criteria to participate in the program.
First-Term Accomplishments
During his first term, Adams says he has made it easier for Kentuckians to vote and harder to cheat in elections. In collaboration with the General Assembly, Adams quadrupled the number of days people can vote through early voting and made it easier to obtain absentee ballots. At the same time, he has culled some 150,000 deceased or ineligible individuals from the voting rolls and pushed a photo identification requirement for voting as well as a ban on ballot harvesting (where third parties collect and deliver absentee or mail-in ballots for voters). He also expanded audits of vote counts and transitioned to statewide use of paper ballots.
Despite claims by some individuals, Adams says Kentucky’s voting machines have never been connected to the internet. He adds that a new law makes it a felony to connect ballot scanners to the internet. But Adams says small-scale voter fraud does exist, pointing to the recent indictments of a candidate for constable in Monroe County and six accomplices for alleged vote buying. That candidate lost his election.
“It still happens, just like we have murder and robbery, and other crimes,” says Adams. “But we’re catching it.”
Adams says Joe Biden was legitimately elected president of the United States in 2020 and that allegations of large-scale manipulation of elections, such as Chinese hackers shifting of millions of votes to other candidates, are “crazy myths.” He says legitimate cases of voter fraud in that election have been prosecuted. Those cases, he explains, were not large enough to sway the election and occurred in states that have weaker voting rules than does Kentucky.
“The bottom line is our elections are more secure now than they’ve ever been,” Adams says. “But it doesn’t mean that we can take our guard down on preventing election fraud.”
Priorities for a Second Term
With 10 percent of registered voters in Kentucky listing themselves as independents, Adams says those individuals should be allowed to participate in the state’s primaries.
“I think it’s unfair that we ask taxpayers regardless of their party to pay for our elections but then we put up a wall and say you can’t vote,” he says.
In addition to being unfair, Adams says excluding independents can distort the outcomes of some elections. He says the far left or the far right tend to be more motivated to vote in primaries. By excluding independents, Adams contends an important voting bloc that could moderate the outcomes is not represented.
While he continues to endorse absentee voting by mail, Adams says he would not support internet voting even if it could be made secure. He says too many people already believe the internet is responsible for voting irregularities.
“I think it would hurt turnout if we did elections over the internet,” he says. “People wouldn’t trust them.”
Adams says he also wants to provide more polling places on election day. But that would require more poll workers, which have been harder to come by since the COVID-19 pandemic. Filing those positions with an equal number of Democrats and Republicans is the responsibility of county party organizations, and Adams says the state could threaten to withhold funding to those operations that fail to secure sufficient poll workers for their counties.
During the 2022 midterm elections, several counties reduced the number of polling places, resulting in long lines for voters. Adams says he protested those county voting plans, but the Kentucky Board of Elections overruled his objections. Now he says he wants the General Assembly to give the Secretary of State authority to compel counties to open more voting locations if needed.
Adams, who continues to practice election law for clients in other states, says he has been fair and nonpartisan in his official capacity as Kentucky’s Secretary of State. He says he is facing primary challengers because he is “decent person” who is willing to work with people of differing political beliefs.
“That’s a good thing,” says Adams. “If I pay a price for leadership that’s fine, but it’s the right thing to do and I think all Kentuckians are better off for it.”
