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. 

Jason Griffith is a Democrat running for Secretary of State.

He’s a teacher in Eastern Kentucky and a business owner. He decided to run for secretary of state because across the state voters are being removed from the voter rolls for not voting.

“We are seeing it more with people who are poor, people of color, and so I decided to take a stand against that,” he said. “It’s very disheartening because I’m seeing people who are running for this office now, on the other side, who are in fact saying we need to remove people from voting rolls, and I believe that first of all, the office of secretary of state is not a partisan one, but more importantly, I think it should be blind of that corruption, and we should advocate for more people voting, not less.”

 While Griffith doesn’t believe the people should be removed from the voter rolls simply because they have not voted, he does acknowledge they need to be cleaned up; a way to do that is through automatic voter registration.

“With automatic voter registration, I’m sure you’re familiar with it, you are automatically registered to vote when you apply for a driver’s license or state ID, of course with option of opting out,” he said. “The wonderful thing about that, aside from getting more people registered to vote, is that it is a self-cleaning mechanism.  So in four years when you have to renew your driver’s license, if you don’t do it, it’s for one of four reasons: One, you’ve been incarcerated, two, you have unfortunately deceased or number three, you have moved out of the commonwealth.”

Griffith is firm believer that former felons should be able to vote.

“I’ve continually been pushing for that right,” he said. “To me it’s an American right, I believe that if you have paid your debt to society, you have no outstanding fines, that the parole board is a much better indication whether you should receive that right back, not a politician in another part of the state. Take government out of it; let it be the people who see you are rehabilitated ready to head back to society and ready to make a contribution again.”

Griffith also thinks it’s important to engage 18-25 year old voters.

“The problem is they register at 18 and many of them don’t get to vote that first time, and that registration doesn’t move with them,” he said. “That’s another reason I’m advocating for automatic voter registration because when you renew, your place of residence and your precinct move with you. I believe firmly if we implement that we would see a much bigger increase in the number of 18-25 year olds that actually go to vote because they can vote now where they live.”

The security of elections are on everyone’s minds, to keep elections safe in Kentucky, Griffith would like to continue the work that is already being done in the office.

“The State Board of Elections is already entered into an agreement with Cyber Scout, a leader in security, I would like to keep that on,” he said. “We would have to do internal audits on a regular basis.”

The secretary of state’s office works regularly with the Department of Homeland Security and Griffith says making sure internal audits are done early and often is important.

“That extends to the machines, not only just the data itself, but the mechanism by which the data gets into those databases” he said. “We can proactive on that too using honeypots and different type of decoys within that system that allow us to figure out where potential attacks might come from and how we go back at them.”

While Griffith doesn’t believe the office is partisan, secretary of state candidates are required to run with a party, with Republicans increasingly winning more offices, this could not bode well for Griffith and other Democrats, however, Griffith believes being from a rural part of the state can help him appeal to more conservative voters.

“The state has turned red in areas that have traditionally been blue and a lot of that has to do with we have had statewide candidates that don’t necessarily always reach out to rural areas, as an Eastern Kentuckian, I can definitely tell you that I have racked up dozens of endorsements in rural areas because I have went and listened to people that the establishment has long forgotten about, or has not considered important,” he said. “Those people are our leaders in our communities, whether it’s our mayor, county judge, magistrate and what they have to say is important because it affects them.”

Griffith says his presence at events sets him apart from his opponents.

“This is my 138^th event today in this short campaign cycle,” he said. “I have campaigned in probably 65 to 70 counties, that doesn’t mean traveling through, that means actually legitimately been on the ground. But also I believe I have a message that focuses on the issues that are important to Kentuckians.”

Griffith is running against Jason Belcher, Heather French Henry and Geoff Sebesta in the primary.