>> Kentucky's chief elections official is in his second term and remain steadfast in defending the integrity of our elections.

I talked with Kentucky secretary of State Michael Adams and the need for civics education.

Expectations for voter turnout.

This presidential election year and legislation he signed that could either help or hurt the electoral process.

Secretary Adams is my guest now on connections.

♪ ♪ Thank you for joining me for connections today.

I'm Renee Shaw today's guest is well known for his first term promise to make it easier to vote harder to cheat.

I caught up with Kentucky Secretary of state Michael Adams.

Now in a second term to talk about election integrity and restoring confidence in the process.

How Kentucky fared on a recent civics assessment and how he wants to improve those scores and his view on election-related legislation before state lawmakers this session.

>> Secretary Adams, good to see you again.

Thanks.

Great to be back.

A belated congratulations on your victory again.

I'll take it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So how's your second term treating us so far?

We're pretty We've managed to KET our office still at the middle of the conversation on elections.

I'm proud that we're still living with integrity.

That Kentucky is trust our elections.

I think maybe one of my greatest accomplishments is that Governor Beshear won a second time.

It was close and there are wild, irresponsible allegations of fraud and corruption and she's changing numbers like we saw the first time that he got elected.

It's important.

We need to have everybody except the election results with your candidate wins or loses.

But we're also going to be on just the election process and talk about other issues as well like civics education.

Right?

I want to talk more about that.

But since you mentioned about, you know, restoring the electorate's trust in the elections process.

Right?

And we're still having this conversation.

We thought that would have dissipated by now, but it seems to be stronger.

>> Then it was before your response to how you when you see the news reports of questioning even the 2020 results for the presidential election and even some races in Kentucky.

Your response to that >> all we can do is educate folks that we can make the laws better.

And then we can explain what we've done to make the last better.

And I I do think that Kentucky is better off than your average state right now in terms of both sides accepting election results that we saw that November, everyone except and then right, Democrats, one governor and lost everything Both sides went away feeling like it was a fair election.

So part of that is is having integrity in the process and explaining also what you're doing and why.

And I think also big part of it is being nonpartisan about it, not expanding voting with Democrats.

Love tightening up until the protocols that Republicans love to do this in a bipartisan way.

Everyone trust elections, paper ballots.

The thing that makes a big >> Yeah, I wouldn't think so.

I think I underestimated of what how what a difference that would make in people's reliance on results.

The first time I ran for this office, every single place I went and spoke to folks, they brought up about one paper ballots and it wasn't just Republicans.

It was everybody.

>> And that kind of threw me for a loop because of some ideological issues.

A very practical issue, but organically ahead to support this November was the first time in Kentucky history that every voter, Kentucky voted on a paper ballot county by a scanner optical scanner and they get you the best of both worlds.

You get the speed of the quick count, but also the security, the paper trail.

Yeah.

And when you have constitutional amendments, though, it can be a lengthy, as we learned in 2022.

Yeah, a pretty lengthy ballot there.

And that could be the work to a constitutional amendments advantage or disadvantage.

Right.

And speaking of which there several proposed constitutional amendments that are have been filed and there's a few that are getting some conversation.

>> Here in Frankfort, tell us the rules on how many constitutional amendments can be put on a ballot.

>> So legally, we can only accept input for on on the ballot and we've been asked what happens if there are 5, right?

Well, I don't know.

There's no answer to that.

I would think the legislature, they're highly, highly competent.

They know how to manage their for Florida, received things and if they if they pick 4 and then they add one, I'm sure they will tell us what to do.

I don't think that I should get to pick what does not go on the ballot.

So it's not just of what the first one to hit your desk, right?

That's not how it works.

Well, we don't know how it works, but I think if we do get 5 center us, they'll give us a resolution or something to tell us what you what to do from there.

>> Let's talk a little bit about.

I want to talk about voter registration because you didn't put out a press release about how you expect to have more than 2 million Kentucky ends vote in the presidential election, but also that there are more but registered voters now and Republicans continue to edge out Democrats, which is a flip from where we were just a couple years ago.

Talk about those numbers and the significance of them.

>> Well, we do see pretty much the same thing that we've seen the for years I've been in office, which is Republicans growing and Democrats shrinking.

But number 2, independents growing by a much further clip.

Then the Democrats and Republicans put together and especially younger voters, first-time voters.

55% of these independent registrants are first-time voters age 18 to And this is actually kind of it consists of what you see generally with young people being very dubious of institutions being dubious of the 2 major parties.

My daughter is turning 18 this year.

So we've been for the first time she's going to be Republican for dad.

Haha, but she's very independent minded to ensure that heartache that all.

Yeah.

And so I think one of the things >> that my party needs to do with want to win the governor's race next time as we can just think that getting on base out is sufficient.

It's a good start.

You need that.

But we also have to find a way to reach the middle.

And we really do have a bigger centering Kentucky politics.

I think people realize on both sides, are we putting enough emphasis on getting to those folks who are in that age bracket?

You just mention 18 to 29 were 35 because they are growing more independent them.

>> Us older folks, right?

Yeah.

And so we'll talk about Civic said in a minute.

But in the campaign angle, I worked really hard.

Both my efforts to to target young voters with with my advertising in my style and the reason I want to 2019 actually lost seniors that you're like everyone else on about a Republican and I want to upset because I corded younger voters and I won a big landslide this time because I was Republican.

The former that situaiton look, these people are going to be voting for the next 50 years.

Let's not ruin our image with them when they're trying to vote for the first time by, for example, taking away the college ID is a form of ID or going to talk about that.

But you are a tweet machine or it's a post machine now since attacks.

Whatever taxing your and your and your good acts are.

And so I think that also resonates right here.

You're really adept with the social media.

Let's talk about the civic health assessment.

Then I'll get into some of those other measures.

You your office and that conducted this 2023 Civic Health assessment that looked at how Kentucky fares and 3 topics of acknowledge civics and polarization over always going to see.

But we scored a B and polarization.

So break down the overall.

And then I want to talk about the polarization.

Great.

>> So there's some good news and some bad news in here.

The good news is Kentucky INS disproportionately trust legitimate news sources like you like local television, like print media, the more than say Facebook and X and TikTok and that's that's encouraging.

>> And also Kentucky's or less polarized than the national average about 20 percentage points likelier to be tolerant of other views to be okay with dating someone who's of the other party or working for some of the news of the other party, then the national average.

I think you saw that in November.

That's all that.

We still have the center of people that split their tickets.

We always have that.

So that's the good news.

Here's the bad news.

We're not simply litter it as a society.

And I think that's largely because we don't have civics in schools.

I never had civics growing up.

I didn't teach myself this stuff.

Only half of Kentuckians can tell you the 3 branches of government and a 3rd can even tell you one branch of government.

Far fewer than half can tell you single local officials name or their legislators name.

And they know who the members of Congress are from Georgia, New York, but don't know the things that you know to hold a local government accountable as a conservative.

One of the things I believe is I would rather have local governments to address something before the state in the state before the federal.

That's kind of one of the tenants of of conservatism and the founding Fathers believes, right?

The Framers believes this been flipped on its head by the nature of current media is everyones focused through cable news on washing DC and the missing what's going on locally in world newspapers in introduce this as well.

Absolutely.

So what is your remedy to this?

You want there to be civics education in K through 12 school?

Yeah.

I think there's a couple of really good products that we get from teach our kids to fix.

One of them is is obvious teaching them about the teaching in our history and not not adulterated fake history, but a real history.

The United States.

And and patriotism I think will come out of that but also knowledge is needed to be.

Voters to be citizens.

If you go back and look, 2 years ago when we first came up with public education, the rationale was not to create a workforce, which is good.

It was to create citizens that are capable, soft governing.

So one thing is hopefully you get that out of it.

But another is these are soft skills that we can teach our kids that will make them much better voters, but also better neighbors and better citizens, better workers.

Yeah.

So we'll see.

Is there legislation that's being put forth on that?

>> Yes, we've had some really encouraging conversations.

And so we do expect that to be forward right?

Still have some time before the end the filing session for the bills in the House and Senate.

So let's talk about some of these bills that start.

>> With Senate Bill 10, this is Chris McDaniel who just happens to be the Senate budget chair who he's had this.

I think 7 years, 7 or 8 years.

9, 9, Okay.

I KET it had been a long time.

You lose track over here where to move the go, give it to all races and all of those down ballot to even numbered years in presidential election.

Right?

The rationale for that, they said cost savings and they've done a fiscal analysis of that.

That shows, you know, 20 million for counties and a couple million for the state.

Tell me your thoughts about this bill to as much as you're comfortable saying and it would benefit the electorate and increase voter participation.

There's there's pros and cons with with basically any kind of Bill the pros are indeed, because savings for the county's it would save us a little money here.

But mostly would say the county's money.

>> We did this actually about 3 decades ago.

We got rid of off year elections the year after a presidential by giving a 5 year term to county officials to move them off that year to the midterm year.

And they gave Kentucky's year off from attack ads and everything else and get the kind.

Of course you're often getting poll workers so think that was a good improvement.

There's certainly a positive to this.

And there's there's probably a negative to it as well.

You're going to have much longer ballot if you take these races like the governor and the and the attorney general, you move those over to a presidential year.

You have a lot of competition from media scrutiny.

A lot of competition for fundraising, et cetera, and probably a pretty long ballot.

So we're staying neutral on it and never left the House and it worked out among themselves.

But there's pros and cons, right?

It has passed the Senate.

This still is in the possession of the House, but they have not >> acted on it Senate bill 61 by Senator John Schickel whose of Boone County, Northern Kentucky.

This is his last session is he is going to want recovery tiring eliminate the 3 days of voting.

The majority position in the Republican Party is let people vote.

And when we proposed this in 2021, only I think 3 House members voted no.

Only 3 senators voted no.

The vast majority of super majorities embraced voting access for Kentuckians.

I feel like that's where they still are.

>> We're watching this but really closely it would be a catastrophic error for us to refill voting rights going into presidential election to take away three-quarters of the access voters have and crowd them all into one day could be a huge problem for voters and for the county clerks and poll workers KET would also be a national embarrassment for us.

If you think Georgia really got it 3 years ago measure what happens if we take away early voting, they took away of some early voting is but they had weeks left.

We'll be going to just one day.

We be trying to shoehorn 2 million voters into one day.

I think it will be really bad for images of state.

And I appreciate that.

We're working really hard in Frankfort to cut taxes and to streamline red tape and court businesses.

We have these big job announcements.

The more that we may Kentucky looking backwards place for people to want to move to.

This could be harnessed not just to attract investment and jobs.

The hard to KET our kids here.

>> So you think that singular issue damage economic development advancements, even the fact that this is being introduced?

Even though it's not pass to become law just because introduces already gotten this all kinds of negative coverage around the I'm just very sensitive to our state's image.

I want to see us be a top state, not about it.

>> Even though it would leave, it may be some staffing issues may be some cost savings that still you think that the the cons outweigh the even the county clerks.

And by the way, when I ran the first time, the county clerk's, we're all against early voting and I work with them on it and we got to a place we can do it.

And now they passed a resolution of their association to oppose this bill and support early voting and doesn't just make the voting process better for the voters.

It makes it better for the county clerks and the poll workers that have 4 days to get these folks in and out and vote versus just one day.

Just having one day to do this is pretty stressful.

>> And Republicans seem to have also like this idea, right and I don't know if they've outnumber Democrats and the participation of early voting but close to it.

Yeah.

Have you know, on average the use of early voting tracks, the registration pretty close.

>> But in a presidential election, we saw 4 years ago was.

365,000.

Democrats want in-person early 511,000 Republicans vote in person early said Republicans had an advantage in the presidential election.

It's bad.

I think it's bad optics and that politics Republicans to be taking this on that also cost him votes if they pass it.

Yeah.

So another issue that I'm curious about your know your position, but the viewers may not about the Bills SB 80.

That would.

And I want you to explain primary versus secondary, former of identification.

So we would >> take a student ID's from being primary to secondary forms of voter I D why is that significant?

And credit cards to be eliminated altogether?

I'm fine.

With eliminating credit and debit.

I mean, why is the why were they even part of the so they were in the law before I ran for office before I got put it past the debit card credit card was it was used as a primary form of ID.

We got rid of that.

>> So so here's what's a bad idea to repeal college ID's teaser photo ID's to have a government ID to get the college ID.

So these are just secondary to that.

I went to college 30 years ago and to prove who I was to go to college.

I do with my photo on it.

It's not gotten any more lax since then.

These are perfectly adequate.

They've been proved adequate.

We've had no fraud coming out of people thinking college ID's.

The reason this is in the law is because I helped write the law.

I look at every case in America where a photo ID laws have been challenged and the ones that have been struck down to have a college ID exception and the ones that were upheld by courts did have it.

And I want a law that actually is on the books in forest versus just a talking point.

So unfortunately, you see some recently.

And so folks facing primaries want to go out.

So, yeah, we did this and that.

But I've been the customer service business section to win this election and I would have a smooth election where people are confused by what is and isn't an ID and also an that we don't have our photo ID law struck down for.

I want to actually enforce this going to present role.

So you think this would subject Kentucky to litigation if we were to include this into the law about starting student ID?

Yeah, I've already been to 3 times a and we want every case because we had to stretch it in a way that would pass muster with the courts.

>> If we don't do that, which we very carefully negotiated a road.

If we don't do that, we could lose our law entirely.

So the issue is over in being a non government issued ID.

Is that the crux of the argument student ID's are not.

But you just made the case that what you have to >> and were to get a student ID.

You have to have government forms of identification to get that.

Yeah.

And most of our cause students go to government ecologists.

Yeah, right.

Just as making sense to me other bills that are that you're looking at either defense Give us a couple.

So we have a bill that's in draft form.

We've been working very closely with Representative Jennifer Decker who's been are are leaving a legislator, been great to work with.

She was the lead sponsor of House Bill 5.70, for 3 years ago.

That was early voting bill.

>> And some things that we've asked for that I think will get one is to increased funding to the county's for elections.

We've done a lot of that already of the legislature has been really generous in increasing the base funding.

Also having line items for new equipment and so forth.

But I think that will have an increase in base funding, which is a good carrot for open more locations to, though, but also also a stick.

We do have this isn't even the law now for the clerks to inflate the number of precincts on paper and then close them because they get rewarded monetarily in the state law by many precincts staff.

And so we actually had, for example, Carroll County a couple years ago, they have 11 precincts to close 10 one place to do in the entire county.

And then they got a check from state government next week for their 11 precincts, right?

So I just want the incentives right to to be good and to reward the courts ripping >> What about audits of election results?

Is that something that is being reviewed and evaluated and do you support that?

I absolutely support it.

We rigorously test every ballot scanner before it's ever utilized election.

And these are considered publicly.

>> Attended.

We invite the public to the news media come watch us run about 3 machine.

Make sure it counted correctly.

We rigorously test them.

But we also have to be after the election to show that yeah, discount was correct.

So we had a model, a pilot project that was OK, I think we can do better.

So there is a bill now that is getting some traction that would have basically a randomized recount.

You pick one race in one precinct in every county and we recount that race.

And what I like about this is it would be a rational approach.

She would be randomized and it wouldn't be what we had 2022, which is people that ran in lost by large margins suing me and soon the county clerk and demanding a recount.

It grew at taxpayer expense.

Now.

>> There is a bill that would cut a straight party voting as an option on ballots you forward or get it as they used to say around here, you when the Democrats are in Frankfort, in the 1950's in the past, the straight ticket voting law >> I'm not sure why they're coming back 7 years later and money to change.

really understand that.

I don't think it's a good idea to change the election rules in the middle of the game.

Now, if we get more locations, sure.

But things like that.

It seems like it's political to me that they're trying to undo that.

They're on the river side of those.

Those voters.

It's also going to increase if it becomes law, increased the lines to vote.

It's a good time city making for some of the going check one box and walk out and get the exposure in the booth.

If you've got to go through and mark down, every little circle is just going take more time for voters to vote.

But as you said, a few minutes earlier with this newer generation, the 18 to 29 are 35 or more independent and more independent streak.

>> They're not meant necessarily going to straight party voting anyway, right?

That's true.

But but most voters are still straight party on one side or the other.

And right.

I just want to get voters are not as quickly as we officially can, but also that stick.

It's a bad look to try to change the law, to try to benefit a party.

That's what's happening.

I think with the Democratic caucuses, they passed this law to stick it to the Republicans and now that she's on the other foot and they want to repeal it.

Another rationale could be, though, that would require you to know more about each and every individual on the ballot and not just pull a lever out of laziness.

Well, let's have some his education first and we'll try.

>> Had an affair I do want to ask you about in the house there.

There's one measure and there could be others.

House Bill 3.41. a proposed Constitution amendment.

And I I would have to check this because I didn't think that non-citizens can vote any way, but it clarifies that you have to be a citizen in order to vote.

So this may be a surprising development or legislation for some wise it's needed.

What's the loophole, which I was there.

So the the idea is just dramatically the way the Constitution currently is written.

It says a person who's a citizen is and how to be a voter.

But it doesn't say the mere emissions and say that if you're not a citizen, then you can be a voter V. There are some municipality is in America, San Francisco, New York that have past a warden says local ordinances to expand voting to noncitizens.

They can do that in a federal election because of federal law.

But in their state constitutions, the school board or local offices, the mayor of those things in theory, noncitizens people to vote against non-citizens voting in the election in Kentucky.

And so that's what this measures aimed at is just clarifying the Constitution that cities can go off on their own and create a different standard for you can vote was is coming up now when we've been doing it this way for.

>> A longtime coming up now I think is coming up because you are seeing San Francisco, New York and other other major cities around the country explicitly granting voting privileges to noncitizens.

So I do want to ask you what, this is not an election-related, but still somewhat related to election integrity.

The GOP party in Kentucky back in early January.

>> Adopted a resolution concerning January 6 and it claimed that people were charged with crimes related to that without due process and they were held without due process.

Your view on the party.

And it was a very slim voting.

This was the governing body of the Republican Party who who issued this Vo 2 votes.

That was that a margin.

Do you think this was a good idea?

And do you think that reflects where the Republican Party philosophically is about election integrity.

And about January 6, as far as that's concerned.

Well, sure, hope not.

A on January 6, 2021 win.

>> When the ride occurred, I went out immediately in the hallway and had a media scrum and said this is outrageous.

This has to stop.

I don't feel any differently today.

That was a dark day for for America.

And I think it's a mistake for the Republican Party in this to your point was a very close, though, to the party is split on this kind of stuff.

I think it was an unforced error by our party to to do this.

Number one, this is not an issue that appeals to Democrats appeals to independents and even have Republicans apparently don't don't like this.

The drop of a political party is to expand the base.

And it's to win elections.

And every time they pass something like that is going to be harder for me or others to go out there and compete and pick up the center when the selections.

>> When you think about this being a presidential year and the likelihood that we have a rematch of President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump.

Does that give you any kind of intestinal flu or heartburn will be good for turnout?

Because let people really don't like Joe Biden really don't like Donald Trump.

You are lessons going to be.

>> Smooth.

It's going to be fair.

It's going to be free is going to be open regardless of who the candidates are.

I have my own personal preferences, but you will respect the will of the people on both sides and won the election night.

>> Our secretaries of state across the nation talking about how to handle allegations of fraud and those types of things in coming up with a tighter game plan in order to prevent and not just those allegations, but to make sure the systems are Don and with integrity.

>> Yeah, I'll tell you, I've been active in the National Association of Secretaries of State for 4 years now.

When I first got there, we were very divided.

And to some degree we've been actually kind of brought together because we're facing a common And so we do a lot of information sharing with each other.

Our our staffs talk constantly.

We talk constantly we have regular meetings and we share what's working in our state.

And and we have different approaches based on our ideology sometimes.

But we all agree on having accurate information and getting that out to people.

There's always going to be a French who want to just see the world burn.

But most people are good people in operate in good faith and they want to believe in the elections.

They don't want to believe in conspiracy theories.

They want to be right.

In Kentucky.

At least we see that that sides winning.

Yeah.

>> So the couple of minutes we have remaining, I've asked you all about what the legislature wants to do for you or to you.

What do you want to accomplish in these next 4 years?

Well, my focus in Twenty-twenty Forest is 2024.

I think this election is going to more challenging the 2020.

>> A surprisingly in 2020 we had a once-in-a-century pandemic.

It was my first year in office.

It was a real challenge but also had a lot of tools.

I had emergency powers.

I could fix stuff.

I don't have those now because the emergency is over and it's appropriate.

I should have that kind of power outside of an emergency.

But now I've got to deal with the more traditional problems of how do you have enough locations?

How do you have enough poll workers had to fight misinformation and these are now kind of evergreen problems.

Unfortunately, we all do with a across the country.

But in 2024, that's going to be my my sole focus coming out of this election.

I think it will get a little easier and I'm going to try to expand my office's portfolio a bit and talk more about Civic said talk more about economic development.

>> And 2025 were off year.

Hallelujah.

Haha.

So that to give you some breathing Chile before.

26, which we know with the U.S. Senate race will be incredibly significant here in So well.

Thank you.

Secretary Adams, always good to speak with you.

Good luck with the session and what they did with the office for a second time around.

It's good to see you.

Take good care.

>> Thanks so much for joining us today for connections.

Stay in the loop and connected to what matters to you on Kentucky.

Addition each week night at 6.30 and you can listen to connections by podcast.

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Thanks so much for watching.

I'm Renee Shaw.

Until I see you again.

Take really good care.