Taking risks and leading with courage
Michael Adams is Kentucky’s 86th secretary of state. A first in his family to get a college degree, Adams is a graduate of Harvard Law School, which he attended on low-income aid. He has worked in politics, practiced election law, and was reelected during the 2023 general election, winning 118 of 120 counties. He received the most votes of any statewide candidates. Adams is the most recent recipient of the JFK Profiles in Courage Award. He recently spoke with American Habits editor Ray Nothstine.
Are there any underappreciated or unique powers of the secretary of state office in Kentucky that a lot of people might not know about?
Sec. Michael Adams: Every secretary’s office is a little different. We’re sort of a catch-all. If the Legislature decides to create a program, they’ll say, “Oh, I’ll have the secretary of state do it.” That’s how we acquired elections decades ago. It’s not in the Kentucky Constitution. We were just convenient and receptive to the task. Our business filing services aren’t in the constitution either. They decided to give it to us.
I didn’t know this when I ran, but in Kentucky, if the governor issues a veto and is overridden, the Legislature delivers the bill to me, and I sign it. I’ve signed around a hundred bills into law. That’s been the case under our laws for more than a century. We typically had one party controlling the government for most of our existence. You didn’t really have a Democratic governor with a Republican secretary of state. That was unusual.
Even when we did, you had split control or the Democrats controlling the Legislature. Just the way the pieces came down on the board, I’ve ended up with Republican super majorities in the Legislature and a Democratic governor. They don’t get along so well, which is why I’ve signed all sorts of bills, including some of my laws. It’s been cool and we’ve taken every opportunity to hold signing ceremonies.
You are the latest recipient of the JFK Profiles in Courage Award for your work with Republicans and Democrats on elections. What does that mean not just for you, but for Kentucky? Many are saying Kentucky is the model. Why is that?
Adams: No one was more surprised than I was when I got the call from JFK’s grandson. I’m proud. I think what they saw through some of the national media coverage is how Kentucky is doing it differently. It’s not in the specifics of the number of precincts we have or how many voting days we have, although I think our system works well. What received national attention is the fact that we’re not partisan and that we work together across party lines to fashion our policies.
We do that for a couple of reasons. You get better policy when you listen to people outside your tribe, and voters trust the process more if they see both sides working together. Over the last few years, I’ve not seen other states or Congress work in a bipartisan fashion on elections. There might be other things they’ll work together on, but not election issues like we did. It’s a third-rail issue. The Democrats have a certain view of what they think it should look like and the Republicans have theirs.
I worked with the governor across party lines during the pandemic and put forward a bipartisan bill where both sides got something. We found that having access and security is a win-win; you don’t lose security by having more access. They pair well together—politically, too. Most policy decisions are trade-offs. This one’s not.
In my remarks, I made a point to accept that award on behalf of all election officials who are doing their job in a nonpartisan fashion, not trying to rig the game for one side or the other. These are decent and honest people. Even if we disagree on some issues, we’re all trying to take the wonderful system we’ve been bequeathed and make sure it survives today and for future generations.
Receiving that award you talked about “leadership, not followership.” I think that’s an important observation in this hyperpoliticized era. What did you mean by that?
Adams: This is not a partisan or ideological complaint. It’s beyond that. There was a time not that long ago when we admired people who were independent thinkers. We liked the fact that we had a senator or a governor who would have a divergent take.
Now, there are risks to that. That’s why President Kennedy wrote his book. The people he chose as “profiles in courage” were individuals who took political risks by being independent thinkers and questioning assumptions. Today, it’s literally more physically dangerous to do that, but certainly more politically dangerous to do that, too. I think you have seen the vital center of American politics collapse, not just at the voter level, but in our institutions.
It’s bad to see Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and Mitt Romney, basically the center of the Senate, all retiring. They are distinguished legislators, but they can’t legislate now. I’m not a moderate. I’m a conservative, but it’s tough if you’re not perceived as a far-right or far-left candidate or leader. If you’re not pure enough for your side, you get a lack of support or hate from your side. Then you get no love from the other side for being willing to break bread and to try to work out a compromise. You’re on a political island.
It’s a unique time in American politics. Historically, two strong parties each represented about 40 percent of the electorate. Campaigns and parties would then work to persuade the 20 percent in the middle.
I cut my teeth working for people like Sen. Mitch McConnell. Traditionally, McConnell had to win a lot of Democrats to get reelected. A big part of his campaign strategy was talking about getting funding for projects that appealed to Democrats. You don’t see a lot of campaigns like that now, that hold their base and reach the center. Presidents Obama and George W. Bush both lost independents, but still won. The new model encourages ramping up your turnout versus reaching out to the middle, and so the middle is collapsing. That’s brought us to the moment that we’re in now.
I think some people still see the federal government as a neutral party in the running of elections, or at least as a referee for fairness, so to speak. Some state secretaries that we’ve talked to at American Habits have noted that federal executive orders have made it harder to clean the voter rolls. What incentive is there for Kentucky to run its elections better than, say, an election with heavier federal mandates or control? Why is this separation of powers and state sovereignty so important?
Adams: Unfortunately, there’s been a redirection of public attention to Washington and an expectation that they should solve all our problems. As a conservative, I don’t like big government anywhere, but as a federalism proponent, I certainly don’t want it in Washington. To the extent we need the government involved, I would rather have our state government or local governments in Kentucky address the issue instead of faraway DC.
There’s a reason that the framers of our Constitution delegated election authority to our legislatures and state governments. If you talk to Democratic secretaries of state—I just spent a week with them at a conference—they’ll tell you the same thing. They may not be federalists on everything, but on this, they are. They have more trust in their people, their state, their staffs, their poll workers, and their own county officials than somebody in Washington trying to tell New Mexico or Kentucky how to run elections.
Number one, just as a matter of competence, this needs to be done by people who are closer to the ground. Number two, we’re a diverse country. The right model for how to run elections in one state is not a good fit for another. For example, Kentucky has laws that allow voting by absentee ballot, and roughly a dozen categories of people qualify. Still, only about 2 percent of voters use it.
More than 2 percent of our voters qualify for it, but they don’t want it. Why? Kentucky is a rural state where people want to go to the polls and be physically present. They want to see their neighbors and poll workers. They know them. It’s a ritual in the small towns and communities.
In our more urban areas, they might prefer other methods of voting because these are, on average, more of a professional class. They may travel more, have longer work schedules, need the convenience, or they may not prioritize hanging out with people in their neighborhood. These are places with a lot more ingress and egress. People don’t know their neighbors as well.
Lexington and Louisville are different from Paducah or Pikeville. Oregon’s done mail-in balloting since the 1990s. I don’t have any reason to say that they don’t do a good job with it, and clearly the voters like it, but that wouldn’t work for Kentucky. That’s not how our people want to vote. It’s essential to respect federalism. We must allow the states to do this on their own and do it in the way that fits their local culture.
There are things that Washington can do to be a partner, and I’ll give credit on some fronts. They’ve not tried to commandeer and have offered support. For example, the CISA agency has hired people in our states who are local people, who know the ground, know the neighborhoods, who consult and help us with security. Are we physically securing our voting locations, our election offices, and our clerk’s offices? That’s valuable information.
They have cyber expertise I can’t get in a small town in Kentucky, so they’ll delegate people out here who live here and build local relationships. They’ve done excellent work.
They help with intelligence gathering. We get regular classified intelligence briefings I can’t get on my own. There is a positive role the federal government can play, especially as we’ve seen foreign nations and foreign rogue actors take an interest in sowing discord and trying to rattle the doorknobs of our elections. That is the extent of the value the federal government adds.
Should the feds mandate something like mail-in voting, voter ID, paper ballots, or same-day registration, or is that better handled by your office and the legislatures across the union?
Adams: I can think of maybe two federal laws that have been passed that have been substantively better for our elections. The Voting Rights Act and civil rights legislation. We had Jim Crow discrimination in the South 60 years ago, such as literacy tests and poll taxes. If you go back to 1870, the reason the US Department of Justice was created was primarily to further voting rights in the South and protect people’s participation in civic life. If we do have a jurisdiction that’s not playing by the rules and not respecting every voter, then yes, you want federal involvement.
The Help America Vote Act was a useful measure that directed funding. Ideally, election funding is a three-legged stool with three kinds of elections in America: local, state, and federal. Each of those layers should chip in. Federal funding can be helpful, but when it comes with strings attached, that disincentivizes the states to take the money and then deal with those strings. A lot of my colleagues on the Republican side turn down federal money as a matter of practice every single time because it’s not worth it. We’ve chosen to take those funds, but only if the strings are very light.
I certainly don’t want Congress coming in and telling us how to run our elections—for two reasons. One I already mentioned: States are so different. Number two, let’s say that the Democrats passed HR 1 a couple of years ago and made it law. That would have made it difficult for me and other secretaries of state to maintain the accuracy of voter rolls. It would have banned us from verifying the identity of voters in our elections.
That would be terrible policy and a horrible look. It would have contributed to Republicans not trusting the election process. By the same token, if Republicans took control and passed a bunch of stuff that I favor for my state, and demanded that all the states do that, you would have Democrats in California and Massachusetts stop trusting elections. Congress is too polarized and should just stay out of this and let the states do their job.
You probably get a lot of federal guidance letters. How do you determine the legality or determine if they are in the best interest of Kentuckians? Does anything need to be pushed back against? How do you handle that as a secretary of state?
Adams: The only letter that I’ve received like that has been from Attorney General Merrick Garland in early 2021. It was a threatening letter to all the secretaries of state. In summary, it said, “2020 was a great election. If you ever do anything in your laws that’s less than that threshold level, then we deem that to be a federal civil rights violation and we’re going to sue you.” We threw that letter in the garbage.
In Kentucky, we’re going to decide this ourselves. If Congress passes a law, we’ll respect the supremacy clause. I’m not going to have the attorney general come in and tell me how to run elections in my state and tell me that the things that we did because of the pandemic have to be maintained in perpetuity without the consent of my Legislature. Now, I did go to my Legislature, and I asked them to keep some things that I did in 2020.
We’re not a democracy if one person sitting in Washington can dictate election policy for 50 states. That’s terrifying.
This is part of why I got the JFK award. We doubled down on expanding access and legislators agreed. That’s how democracy is supposed to work. You go to the people that have the power to make the decisions and you persuade them. We’re not a democracy if one person sitting in Washington can dictate election policy for 50 states. That’s terrifying.
There’s a lot of negative news out there. Some folks want us to be more divided than we are. But related to that there are a lot of questions around our capacity for self-government, given the political dysfunction. What do you find most encouraging about our American experiment today? How do we build upon that aspect that you find encouraging?
Adams: I see a lot of doom and gloom in this office during our hyperpolitical era, but I’m very optimistic. I’ll give you a specific reason. I got elected to this office in 2019 and took office in early 2020, two months before the pandemic hit. My state was one where 2 percent voted absentee and 98 percent voted on one day—Tuesday. No early voting at all. One of only a few states in the country with one day to vote.
I was elected on voter ID and cleaning the rolls. We’ve done that. Suddenly I get sworn in and I’ve got to find a way to expand voting access in a pandemic while keeping people safe. I had to burn basically all my political capital on the Republican side by doing things that typically weren’t perceived as Republican. I had to work with a Democratic governor that they all disliked and had voted against in a very close election. But the biggest issue was President Trump saying things he fortunately is not saying now about absentee and early voting—that those things were not secure. Fortunately, he and the RNC this time have said, “If it’s available, use it. Vote however you want.” It was hard for me to not only change the processes and ensure a successful election, but also to persuade Kentucky voters to take advantage of the new methods.
I encounter people every day who have such distrust of the government that they think whatever I say must be automatically false. I was pleasantly surprised, and I’m still a little bit shocked, that people listened. We’d had polling that showed voters didn’t trust and wouldn’t use early voting. We went out there and sold it. We relentlessly said, “You can trust these voting methods. I know they’re new, they’re different, but you can trust them. Here’s what we do to make sure it’s you. Here’s what we do to keep it secure. Here’s what we do to make sure no one’s cheating.” Our voters accepted it, and they loved it.
By about 2 to 1, voters preferred and used early voting instead of voting on Election Day. Now, what day people choose to vote is their business, but they have the option, and they don’t begrudge others for their choice. It’s a game-changer for voters in Kentucky. It’s gotten us to the national mean in participation, but hopefully above that in terms of the process being accepted by voters.
The lesson here is that we’re not as polarized as we think, where side A is going to believe X and side B is going to believe not X, and there’s no room in the middle for persuasion. I came in as a total unknown and was able to persuade voters to reject what they were being told from the Oval Office, to listen to me and take advantage and trust these methods. If they had not done that, our election would have collapsed.
We didn’t have the bandwidth on Election Day to have enough locations open during pre-vaccine COVID to manage 2 million voters. Roughly over a million early voters made it doable. I think that’s what the Profile in Courage Award is about: You have people in a lonely position, but they go out and make the case, and they move the world to their point of view. That happened in Kentucky.
I lived in Kentucky for over five years, went to Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, and lived in Shelbyville, too. I love traditional bluegrass music. East Kentucky is a gorgeous, really underrated area if you’re talking about pure beauty. Kentucky’s this hidden gem if you haven’t spent a lot of time there, and it’s culturally distinct and diverse. What do you like most about your state?
Adams: The diversity. I don’t mean that in the bean-counting way or the woke way. It’s literally a very diverse state. People have different accents across our regions and different ways of life. There’s a different topography and culture. Culturally, there are still traces of the Union versus the Confederacy. You can be in one part of the state one day and then the other part the next—as I frequently am—and it’s wildly divergent. I love that about Kentucky.
We have all four seasons. Our bourbon is so good because the temperature changes really force the corn liquor in and out of the barrels. If you look at our state flag, our state seal—which I’m the keeper of by law—is a guy in fancy dress, like a morning coat, and a guy in buckskin and a coonskin cap, and they’re shaking hands. I look at that every day and have one in my office.
It reminds me that we’ve had these internal contradictions in Kentucky going back to 1792 when we split off from Virginia and became our own state, and we’ve managed them. We’ve managed our urban-rural divide. That’s a huge issue today. We’ve had that in Kentucky from day one. It’s always been part of our DNA. We managed to make it work. We managed to trust each other, particularly with our elections. That’s the best thing about living in Kentucky.
