The primary election is May 21, and there are several candidates seeking their party's nomination. The Pure Politics team has contacted each candidate with a primary opponent to find out who they are, and what they stand for. 

Andrew English is a Republican running for Secretary of State. 

English is from Oldham County and a Lt. Commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves. He most recently served as General Counsel of the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet. He says he decided to run for secretary of state because of problems he saw within the office.

"I'm running because we have 48 counties that have more registered voters that citizens registered to vote," he said. "I'm running because we don't have any real voter ID law here in Kentucky, you can really vote with a credit card. I'm running because the governor needs a partner to help take advantage of this--I've been saying $17 billion, but now we just saw a $1.4 billion investment in Meade County. The economic development side of the secretary of state's office needs to be the best it can be to serve the commonwealth." 

English also believes in forging strong relationships with county clerks throughout Kentucky. 

"The relationship with the county clerks has been diminished, I'll use that word, over the past eight years," he said. "Our current secretary has not listened the input of our county clerks, and I always have the vision of a servant leadership role in the secretary of state's office. I want to be somebody that clerks can trust and rely on, and work for them, not dictate to them."

English says he envisions himself as a helper to each county, working to get clerks what they need for their specific county.

Another part of his platform is making sure elections in the commonwealth are secure. He has a three part plan to do so, first, is moving toward automatic voter cleanup. 

"Let me be very clear, I do not want to disenfranchise anyone from the voter rolls. If you want to vote in Kentucky, you should vote, I don't care what party you are, what affiliation you are, it doesn't matter," he said. "If you vote, please vote. Please register to vote. Please take the civic responsibility." 

But he says there are far too many people on the voter rolls who no longer live in the commonwealth, or aren't even alive. His plan would be on an eight year period, after not voting for four years, you would get a notice, if you don't respond or vote for four years after receiving the notice, you would then be automatically removed from the voter rolls. 

The second part of his plan deals with voter identification. He believes everyone should have photo identification, such as a driver's license or state ID, to be eligible to vote. 

Finally, he believes the way to make elections secure--is moving back to paper ballots. 

The secretary of state's office gained national recognition after a Herald-Leader and ProPublica article exposed trouble within the office. This stemmed a piece of legislation stripping the secretary of state of their power on the State Board of Elections, while also changing the makeup of the board by adding two retired clerks to it, and taking away the secretary of state's voting power. English says he supports this legislation. 

"The secretary of state's job does not need to be to dictate to that board, that has been a bad precedent. I believe the term used in the paper was 'unprecedented expansion of power', that is not what needs to happen in the secretary of state's office," he said. "Secretary of state should be there to deal with moneys coming in from the federal government, the hob of money that is used to buy a lot of our voting machines that came from the 2000 election that happened down in Florida." 

English also likes that it gives more power to county clerks, but wish it went further by adding current county clerks to board--one rural, one urban. 

English is facing Michael Adams, Stephen Knipper, and Carl Nett in the Republican primary.