KENTUCKY — Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams announced that in August 2021, 11,835 voters were removed from Kentucky’s voter rolls, including 10,693 deceased voters. Secretary Adams calls this an achievement and was made possible by matching state records against federal Social Security records.
"I think the threshold issue that I will be judged on and should be judged on is, do Kentuckians have confidence in our process. People want high turnout. I do too. But if people don't trust us in running these elections, they won't vote, they won't think it doesn't matter. To show that we're serious, we're doing things like requiring a photo ID vote in our elections. We're cleaning up our voter rolls. The last Secretary of State to print the voter rolls was three secretaries of state ago. The last two didn't make it a priority. My predecessor actually sued to stop the voter rolls from being cleaned up. I took a different approach. So we've been very vigorous ... We did a social security records check with our federal partners, and just that alone helped capture over 10,000 Dead voters that were on a roll that should have come off and hadn't. I think we're hitting about 100,000 voters that we've removed. We're not doing this in a partisan way. Every month, the last Friday of the month, we put out a news release that explains who we took off and why, how many deceased voters? How many nonresidents? How many have been judged mentally incompetent? How many were convicted of felonies and so forth. So we're very transparent about it. I don't want people to think that I'm out there trying to rig the system for my team. I'm not, we're taking Democrats or Republicans off, we're following the law," explains Seceretary Adams.
According to the Secretary of State's office, Democratic registrants represent 46.2% of the electorate with 1,642,726 registered voters. Democratic registration dropped by 5,654, a 0.34% decrease. Republican registrants total 1,577,955, or 44.4% of voters. Republicans saw a decrease of 302 registered voters, a decline of 0.02 percent.
Adams also explains during this In Focus Kentucky segment that he is hopeful that during his term as Secretary of State, he is able to increase voter registration numbers through public awareness campaigns and increased civic education.
"The reason I'm sitting here in this position is because I had a seventh and eighth grade teacher social studies teacher, that as part of his class, the first 10 minutes or so every day was to clip out a news article and make us take a position on it to favor or disfavor whatever policy was reflected in that article. That kind of taught me how to assess information, how to advocate, how to argue and this what I use as a lawyer and as a candidate and as an official. I want more people to have that kind of experience," said Adams.
Earlier this fall, Adams joined the Executive Committee of the Kentucky Civic Education Coalition, a nonpartisan coalition formed by the Kentucky Council for Social Studies to advocate for civic education in schools.
"Here's something I learned from this commission that I didn't know, teachers are afraid to teach civics. They think it's a third rail. They don't want to say anything political. They're worried about parents on the other side of the aisle saying that there's been indoctrination in our schools. I don't want indoctrination in our schools to be sure. But I think we've got to address this. The failings of our education system perspective, civics the entire reason that public education was created Kentucky in the 1800s was to train people for citizenship, it wasn't to train people for jobs. That's important too. But the primary reason was to prepare people for citizenship. They're not just born, having those skills, knowing how to be active citizens. And that's part of the legacy I want to leave in this position is make it easier to vote but also helping people function better as voters," adds Adams.