It was day two for in-person no excuse.

Early voting in Kentucky as we continue our election 2024 coverage and lines were long and many places.

Again, this was the scene at three of the public libraries in Lexington.

Voters also took advantage of the opportunity to vote early yesterday.

Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams says more than 225,000 people voted on day one of early voting.

That's compared to about 57,000 in 2020 and almost 82,000 in 2022.

I spoke to Secretary Adams earlier today about those numbers.

Views on the Electoral College and how elections officials are handling the high turnout and even exaggerated claims about a voting glitch.

Secretary Adams, thank you so much for a bit of your time.

We know you're doing a lot of these media avails, so we appreciate you squeezing us in.

Happy to.

Let's talk about how early voting is looking.

First day of early voting.

Tell us what you know about the number of people who are participating.

So I've been out around the state and also placing paid media, asking voters to vote early.

I'm concerned about crowds on Election Day.

And to put this in perspective, the first day of early voting in 2020, we had, I believe, 57,000 voters vote that day, the first day in 2022 with 81,000, first day in 2020 for 225,000.

That's that's a massive number.

There were some lines at certain points of the day at some locations, but they petered out.

It's it's been steady.

Fortunately, that's good news.

It's good to show that we've got a good turnout, but more importantly, that we're spacing that turnout over four days so we don't have three days of crickets and one day of crowds on Tuesday.

Yeah.

Can you imagine what it would be like on Tuesday if that was the only day people could do in-person?

Yeah, I can't imagine.

I waited in line for three and half hours to vote for president in 2016 before I took office.

I thought that was unacceptable.

I'm glad we fixed that.

Yeah.

So let's talk about some of the maybe not snafu, but the longer wait times, we heard a lot about that.

Even our reporters who were out yesterday, some people waiting an hour possibly to.

And then some I think counties were making some adjustments that today would be smoother.

What do you know about that?

What I'm hearing today and by the way, Friday usually has more voters than Thursday.

We've seen that every every election with early voting.

We typically find Fridays a busier day, but a smoother day because the kinks get worked out.

Individual locations realize that a check in, they'll add a check in here or there.

Right.

We learn.

We learn from the process.

Yeah.

Is it the availability of machines or poll workers or a mixture of both?

It's been a poll worker problem.

I've been pleasantly surprised that our request for for personnel at the polls, we can't open the polls that poll workers.

We've seen a decline over time.

Fortunately, with the higher interest in this election, the higher turnout, we also have more poll workers.

So that's not been a problem, fortunately.

All right.

One of the things we saw that has gone viral on social media is a post that was made about a person in Laurel County who was trying to vote for Donald Trump, but yet it would default to Kamala Harris.

Is that true?

No, we don't have voting machines in Kentucky.

We have paper ballots.

We do in some instances have ballot marking devices as we're required to have by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

And you you punch on the screen the candidate you're selecting, and it prints out the ballot that you can then review yourself, make sure it's accurate before you vote it with this person did with her TikTok account just put out a misleading video that got 19 million views on on TikTok.

What she like to leave neglected to put into the video was that the problem was fixed.

She was able to vote accurately using a different device.

It printed her ballot out.

She confirmed that it was accurate and she left happy.

She got the vote for the candidate that she wanted to vote for, and she was one of 225,000 people that voted the first day of voting.

So even if she hadn't voted accurately, that would be one or two and 25,000.

But she did.

That was the only one that you heard of that had that kind of issue.

And yes, so that was the other question is paper ballots first versus just electronic voting?

We have paper ballots, correct?

We don't have any electronic voting in Kentucky.

Right.

Absentee ballot requests.

We know that there was probably a record number of requests.

How did that translate into ones that have been turned in so far?

Well, as of the time that we're taping this, we've received back three out of every four requests, but that still leaves a couple about 20,000 outstanding.

I do want encourage folks, if you're voting absentee, it's getting late to mail it back.

So bring it to the drop box.

Every clerk has a drop box at their office.

Some of them have more than one around the county.

You can find your drop box location, said Go vote.

Okay, Why not go?

Let's talk about the Electoral College.

And that's made some news here in the last couple of days.

Where do you stand on the relevancy and necessity of the electoral College?

Well, I remember growing up in the nineties when this was a swing state and that was really exciting.

I got to meet Bob Dole and Jack Kemp and George Bush and Dan Quayle when they came here to to campaign and to win Kentucky.

I disagree with the governor.

The governor is obviously running for president, is a Democrat.

He thinks that Kamala Harris is going to lose and he's trying to say the right things to move ahead as a national Democrat, I respect that.

I don't think he's right.

I think to the extent that he's right, it would be good for Louisville or Lexington to get attention.

I don't think that rural Kentucky would get any attention because there just aren't enough people per square mile.

But I think the best defense of the Electoral College is if we have concerns now with the election, that can be localized to certain areas and we can have courts look at them, we can have election officials look at them, and those issues can be segregated to certain jurisdictions.

Can you imagine in a 5050 country, every little tech type video would be relevant in counting and challenging a presidential election, I think would be a disaster.

Go to a popular vote.