Kentucky’s elections have never been as secure as they are today. Here’s why.

The leaves are changing, the temps are dropping, the attack ads are rolling – it’s that time of year again. Even in the best of times, running an election is stressful for state and local election officials and volunteer poll workers. Thanks to conspiracy theorists and anti-government activists, the 2022 elections have become in some ways an even bigger challenge than the 2020 elections were. Election officials have been bombarded with voluminous record requests (largely directed from out of state), frivolously sued for recounts by primary candidates who lost by landslides, and falsely accused of stuffing ballot boxes and other nonsensical allegations of corruption.

While some malefactors would like Kentuckians to think our elections are at risk and your vote doesn’t count, I am here to assure you that our elections have never been as secure as they are today.

Here are some facts about our election process:

▪ No Kentucky voting equipment is ever connected to the Internet. Votes are tabulated by your county board of elections — your sheriff, your county clerk, and one Democrat and one Republican each nominated by their respective parties — using a calculator. No Kentucky voting machine contains a modem that is not allowed by Kentucky law. In fact, the Legislature passed a law this session to make it a felony to connect a voting machine to the Internet.

Results that appear on the state’s Election Night Reporting website are UNOFFICIAL. The official results take weeks to process, due to the multiple stages of review – by the county board of elections, by my Office, and by the State Board of Elections.

▪ We check the tech. Voting machines are tested for accuracy prior to use, at a public event you are able to attend. In fact, a ballot counter has to correctly count over 1 million votes before it is used in an election.

▪ We’re cleaning up our voter rolls. Since I took office, we’ve removed over 166,000 ineligible voters, including 136,000 deceased voters, from our rolls.

▪ Hand-counting every ballot would lead to mass fraud. We used to hand-count ballots, in the early 1900s. That led to so much fraud and so many mistakes that We the People amended our state constitution by ballot referendum in order to move away from hand-count. Moreover, with hand-count, we would have to wait for weeks to find out results of any election.

▪ Our voting machines are secure. They are designed to protect against tampering, including during system storage, transport and voting. Each machine uses physical and system access controls, including lockable doors, tamper-evident seals and access codes.

▪ Your vote is secret. The Kentucky Constitution requires the secrecy of each voter’s ballot. The barcodes on ballots are NOT connected to the voter; rather, they ensure that the scanners recognize the ballot style and contests to be tabulated.

Under my administration, we have enacted Photo ID to Vote, banned ballot harvesting, enhanced voter signature verification, expanded our audit process, provided for video surveillance of voting equipment when not in use, and transitioned our state from electronic voting machines to universal paper ballots, so we get the speed of a quick count and the security of a paper trail.

I have not focused singularly on security; I have also worked to enable access to the polls. We have increased the number of days to vote in-person from 1 to 10. Kentuckians can now cast their ballots on a Saturday — a game changer for working families who can’t take the time off to go the polls on Election Day. We have also made requesting and tracking absentee ballots easier. Uniquely in our country at this polarized time, we have made these changes to improve both security and accessibility with near-unanimous, bipartisan support.

Despite the misinformation, Kentucky’s elections are accessible, and they are secure.

If you have questions about our election process, rather than looking to a YouTube provocateur or a meme on Facebook, consult a legitimate source: my Office, the State Board of Elections, your county board of elections, your sheriff, your county clerk, or your precinct poll workers.

And don’t forget to vote.

Michael Adams is Kentucky’s Republican Secretary of State.