Fair, free and secure elections are a crucial part of a thriving democracy.

But you might wonder what kind of planning goes into Election Day and the different people who make it unfold safely and smoothly.

Our Toby Gibbs takes a look at some of the security measures in place at polling locations and command centers across the state.

This morning, attorney General Russell Coleman pulled back the curtain on the state's Election Integrity Command center.

This is where phone calls and online submissions to Kentucky's election fraud hotline and web form are answered.

Coleman said ensuring Kentuckians have access to free, fair and secure elections is crucial.

If a caller has a credible report of fraud.

Just walking through the process here, we refer it to our Department of Criminal Investigations, DCI, which is working with our federal, state and local partners again across the Commonwealth.

This zealous collaboration really with boots on the ground, not just here in Frankfort from east to west, means that we're able to begin investigations immediately.

This is not something we're punting on.

This is immediately rolling out and chasing down these leads reported by by you back in tuck ins.

There should be no hesitancy that the purpose of us, opening the veil, if you will, is to let Kentuckians know the great efforts, one that are going into ensuring that this election is free, fair and secure.

But also to, look our fellow Kentuckians in the eye and just encourage them to reach out.

We do that, they will find that the other individual on the end of the line, if it's a phone call, will be professionally engaging.

And we welcome the input.

So if Kentuckians are seeing something that they feel like is on the line, is walking a precarious tightrope between whether it is proper or not, then just reach out.

Allow us to make the call, allow our investigators and prosecutors to look at that and determine whether that conduct is criminal or not.

Election law violations can include vote buying and selling schemes, campaign signs within 100ft of a polling place, and voter registration fraud.

If you witnessed anything suspicious today, call one 803 two eight.

Vote that's one 803 two eight vote.

Secretary of State Michael Adams is also working to make sure Kentucky's elections are fair and secure.

I put our elections up against anybody else's America today for both access and security.

We're the only state in America since I've been in office now for six years, that has both improved access for voters and also improved integrity in the election.

We've expanded the voting days significantly.

We make it easier not just to apply for an absentee ballot, but to track it and make sure it gets counted.

We've moved to paper ballots, so we kind of let ironically.

So we've got a paper trail that we can audit after every election.

We also have the fastest vote count in in the country.

Every every election.

You go to bed.

Election night.

No one who won and lost the elections in Kentucky while you wait on other states to take 2 or 3 weeks to count all their votes.

So I'm very proud of our system.

I'm proud of the fact that we ban any of our equipment that people vote on from touching the internet in any way.

Not every state does that.

Some use the internet.

We don't.

We're very old fashioned.

It's very Mayberry is very Petticoat Junction.

The technology that we use, we use tabulators, pens, paper, even fax machines, pretty analog technology.

But I think that really fits us as a state in terms of the level of security that we want, because we don't want to try newfangled things and feel like it makes us, slightly faster in getting account we're satisfied with where we are.

I think there are some things that we have left to do.

I'd like to do more of those.

But I do think that you're seeing in Kentucky, widespread confidence, even among the losers in our elections being secure.

Still, Secretary Adams says there are changes he'd like to see to Kentucky's election laws.

If you if you look at our turnout so far, of course, 99% of the votes have been cast before Election Day are cast by Republicans and Democrats.

And interestingly, the Republicans are utilizing the early voting a lot more than the Democrats.

So we've seen as sort of a not conservative idea, but it's conservatives that are really loving the early voting.

So I'm really proud as a Republican that I brought that to Kentucky.

But about 1% of those voters are independents.

And the reason for that is, in 118 of our counties, independents can't vote.

We have independents voting in Jefferson and Fayette counties because we have nonpartisan offices for city office.

Mayor and city council they can vote for.

I do think in time it won't be while I'm in office, but someday we will open our primaries.

Independent voters.

It's really in the interests of the two major parties to be courting the middle, to be courting the fastest growing voter bloc.

And my prediction is whichever party gets there first is going to have a huge advantage over the other.

Because if a party right now has a majority in registration.

Yesterday, Secretary Adams predicted voter turnout would be around 20% for the 2026 primary election.

For Kentucky edition, I'm Toby Gibbs.

Thank you.

Toby.

After every Kentucky election, several counties are chosen at random for an audit.

During the audit, the state verifies that voting machines tabulated the paper ballots accurately.