KENTUCKY — Michael G. Adams (R), of Paducah, is Kentucky's 86th Secretary of State and he is the 77th person to serve in that role.

He won in the general election in Nov. of 2019 and ever since he has continued to advocate that he wants to "make it easy to vote and hard to cheat," while also restoring Kentuckians faith in the Secretary of State's office and our overall election processes.

Secretary of State Michael Adams joins host Mario Anderson for a wide-ranging conversation on a variety of topics, including reflecting on his first 21 months in office.

"I think the Governor would say this and Attorney General as well. This is not really what we expected. We were in, in 2019. But I'm really proud of what we've achieved. We've done more in 21 months to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat than was done in the prior 200 years, from my perspective and I'm really proud of that. We've done it in a bipartisan way. We have polling that shows my approval rating is as high among Democrats and independents, as is among Republicans, and that's the best way I think to be election administrators is to be fair and be open and let everybody vote," explains Secretary Adams.

Adams campaigned on the idea of wanting to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat here in Kentucky and during the 2021 regular General Assembly session, Adams presented state legislators with he refers to as "the most ambitious election reform plan since 1891" and how it will impact voters and future elections in Kentucky.

"We'll let's put this in context. The election code that I inherited when I was sworn in last year was written in 1891. As before cars, before electricity and homes. That's before people worked off the farm. That's before people had kids and extracurricular activities. The model that we designed was for an agricultural 19th century world, and we live in a different world today. So I thought it was important to try to modernize that system by expanding in person voting. Even in a pandemic, the vast, vast majority of our voters prefer to vote in person. I respect our culture and our tradition. But I thought, let's take it from one day to four. I don't think we need weeks and weeks of in person voting as we had in the pandemic to ensure social distancing. But I also think one day is too stingy, one day from six to six is just not realistic. So the best compromise was to expand from one day to four. That actually tracks what was in our first two state constitutions in Kentucky. We had as a matter of right in the Constitution at least four days to vote. So I think adding that Thursday, Friday and Saturday is a real game changer for working people like my family, blue collar folks that Saturday, especially as a data people are off. That's really the centerpiece of this law. We also have a number of technical improvements, making it easier both to get an absentee ballot to track that ballot to ensure that the ballot is requested by the appropriate person. We applied our voter ID law to the absentee balloting process, a cure process for absentee ballot signatures," explains Secretary Adams.