When Michael G. Adams took office as Kentucky’s secretary of state in 2020, he realized the commonwealth’s election law badly needed updating. It hadn’t been changed for 130 years.
“Our election code was written at a time when you had to ride a horse to go vote,” Adams said.
Having practiced election law, he had a good sense of the improvements that were most needed. Kentucky was one of the most restrictive states when it comes to voting. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Republican Adams worked with Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear to make it easier to vote, expanding early and absentee voting and adding extra days to vote in person. His staff, political advisers and even his own family were upset that he used emergency powers to do this. But the election, despite the challenges brought by disease and higher-than-normal turnout, ran smoothly.
Adams, who is 49, wanted to codify many of the changes he’d implemented. Initially, he had weak support from members of his own party for this project, who’d grown skeptical about voting methods such as mail ballots after the 2020 election. But the bill Adams pushed also included numerous security measures, including photo identification requirements, a ban on ballot harvesting (allowing other people to submit absentee ballots) and an expansion of his office’s ability to remove people from the rolls. Those exact provisions were opposed by Democrats but they came around in order to preserve the expanded voting days and methods.
Voting had become one of the most partisan and contentious issues in the country, but Adams showed how resolution is supposed to happen — winning bipartisan support by incorporating ideas that appeal to both sides of the aisle.
When he ran for re-election in 2023, he did draw two primary challengers who complained loudly about (unproven) election fraud. Adams won renomination and then in the fall was the top vote-getter in the state. Winning by a convincing margin showed that pushing against the current on a difficult issue doesn’t have to end political careers. “If someone does something gutsy and makes change that’s positive, that the people like, and that person gets beat,” Adams warns, “you’ll never see that happen again.”
His ability to listen to people across the political spectrum is one of the defining aspects of his tenure, says Tammy Patrick, chief program officer for the National Association of Election Officials. “In this moment it’s really important that we have someone who exemplifies norms that have fallen by the wayside in some places,” she says, “a chief election official willing to work with those on the other side of the aisle for the betterment of voters.”
Adams knew he wanted to work in politics by the time he was 15. He started working on campaigns before he was old enough to vote. When he wrote his Harvard Law School thesis on election law 25 years ago, the school didn’t even offer an election or political law course.
That’s all changed. “When I ran for this office not long ago, the hardest challenge I had was explaining to voters what the office was and what I did,” Adams says. “I don’t have that problem anymore, and I don’t think my successors will in the near future.”
Find more information about the Public Officials of the Year here.
