The secretary explained that prior to running for office, he worked in a national election law office, a job that required him to work with campaigns in all 50 states. He also served as former Vice President Mike Pence’s attorney.

“That really gave me a good understanding of how other states run their elections,” said Adams. “I got to see a lot of ‘laboratories of democracy.’ That gives you lot of good insight into how elections work in other places.”

While he considered the 2020 election cycle in Kentucky a success, he said it highlighted many of the areas where state election laws needed to be updated. Changes in the process, such as expanded absentee voting and early voting were achieved only through executive orders from Governor Andy Beshear, who worked with Adams to reach an agreement on how to safely hold elections despite the pandemic.

“A big shout out to our county clerks for the amazing work they did last year,” Adams stated. “I get to go on TV and talk about the elections, but they are on the ground actually running them.”

He praised several unique solutions that he saw across the state, including Hopkins County’s use of mobile voting sites.

HB 574 seeks to address the seven key issues that Adams said he saw during last year’s elections.

When the polls open for the May 2022 primary election, Kentucky voters will have more opportunity to vote early. Rather than just having a one day election, next year polls will be open the Thursday, Friday and Saturday before election day.

“Its a game changer for working people,” he said. “For those people who can’t always get off work on Tuesday. Its a few extra days, but not overwhelming for our counties.”

Counties will also have the option of utilizing voting centers in 2022. Rather than forcing voters to drive to the voting site in their home district, counties can open larger voting centers that can handle voters from multiple districts. In 2020, Hopkins County used the Ballard Center for this purpose.

HB 574 will also create a new state absentee ballot portal. Voters seeking to vote by mail can go to the website and request a ballot, where they will have to verify their identity. The request will then be sent to the county clerk, who will then send a ballot to the voter.

The portal will also include ballot tracking abilities. From the moment it is requested, voters can logon to see if their ballot has been mailed, where it is currently at in the postal system and even when it is scanned in by the clerk’s office once returned.

Another major change is to the requirements for ballot verification. According to Adams, prior to 2018, as much as 7.5% of all absentee ballots were thrown out and the voter was never contacted.

“Now, if the county clerk gets your ballot, which you have to sign when you send it in, if you’re signature doesn’t match the one on your voter registration card, they have to contact you,” he said. “Maybe you registered to vote years ago and now your signature is different.”

The bill also officially bans ballot harvesting, a practice in which some elected officials and political activist groups go door-to-door collecting ballots and pressuring voters to vote for a particular candidate.

“This has actually happened in our state,” he said. “In Floyd County, the mayor of Martin, Kentucky is in prison on federal charges because she had control of public housing and sent her people door-to-door telling voters that if they didn’t vote for the mayor, they’d lose their place in public housing.”

Adams said this mayor was arrested on federal charges because, while illegally nationally, Kentucky law did not address this practice.

He said the new bill will also give him authority to clean the voter rolls of Kentucky, removing voters who have died or moved out of the state. He said that each year, the secretaries of states from other states would send notification to his office that former Kentucky residents had registered to vote in their states.

“It was so frustrating because I had no authority by law to remove them,” Adams said.

He hopes to removed some 40,000 ineligible voters from the rolls by the end of his term.

Finally, he stated that HB 574 will guarantee Kentucky voters the ability to vote on a paper ballot to remove any suggestion or thought of elections being rigged or hacked. While counties are not required to update their voting systems immediately, he said that when the equipment they have needs to be replaced, it will have to be replaced with a paper system.

“I love the changes made to our Kentucky election laws,” said Hopkins County Clerk Keenan Cloern. “HB 574 allows us many opportunities to expand our creativity in order to better serve our citizens. I will propose to our Hopkins County Board of Elections to keep all remaining local precincts, big and small, with the addition of a Voting Center on Election Day.”

Cloern said plans are already in place for the three days of early voting scheduled for May 12, 13 and 14 to be held at a centralized voting center, most likely the Ballard Center.

“The most popular voting method introduced last year was drive thru voting, and I will do everything in my power bring it back again,” Cloern said.

Adams has been invited to appear before Congress on Monday to discuss changes to Kentucky’s elections, both in 2020 and with HB 574.