The state's chief elections officer says a Senate bill that essentially strips away three quarters of access Kentucky voters now have to the ballot box during a presidential election year would be, quote, a national embarrassment.

A Senate Republicans bill would eliminate three days of early voting and require no excuse in-person voting to take place only on Election Day.

Republican Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams predicts that more than 2 million Kentucky ends will vote this year and says rolling back early voting could create mayhem.

If you think Georgia really got it three years ago, imagine what happens if we take away early voting.

They took away some early voting needs, but they had weeks left.

We'd be going to just one day.

We'd be trying to shoehorn 2 million voters into one day.

I think it would be really bad for our image as a state, and I appreciate that we're working really hard and Frankfort to cut taxes and to streamline red tape and court businesses.

And we have these big job announcements.

The more that we make Kentucky look like a backwards place people don't want to move to, it's going to be hard, just not just to attract investment and jobs, but hard to keep our kids here.

So you think that singular issue could damage economic development advancements.

Even the fact that this is being introduced, even though it's not passed and become law?

Just that it's introduced has already gotten this all kinds of negative coverage around the country.

And I'm just very sensitive to our state's image.

I want to see us be a top state, not a bottom.

State, even though it would alleviate maybe some staffing issues, maybe some cost savings.

And still you think that the the cons outweigh the pros.

Well, the even the county clerks and by the way, when I ran the first time the Kenneth Books were all against early voting and I worked with them on it, and we got to a place where we could do it.

And now they passed a resolution of their association to oppose this bill and support early voting.

It doesn't just make the voting process better for the voters, it makes it better for the county clerks and the poll workers to have four days to get these folks in an outlet and vote versus just one day.

Just having one day to do this is pretty stressful.

And Republicans seem to have also like this idea.

Right.

And same I don't know if they've outnumbered Democrats and the participation of early voting, but close maybe.

Yeah, they have.

You know, on average, the use of early voting directs the registration pretty close.

But in a presidential election, what we saw four years ago was 365,000 Democrats voted in person early, 511,000 Republicans voted in person early.

So Republicans had an advantage in a presidential election.

It's bad.

I think it's bad optics and bad politics for Republicans to be taken this time.

It's also going to cost them votes if they pass it.

Yeah.

So another issue that I'm curious about, your I know your position, but the viewers may not about the bills SB 80 that would and I want you to explain primary versus secondary form of ID so it would take student IDs from being primary to secondary forms of voter ID Why is that significant?

And credit cards would be eliminated altogether?

I'm fine with eliminating credit and debit.

I don't.

Even know why is why were they even part of.

The so they were in the law before I ran for office and before I got photo I.D.

pass the debit card credit card was it was used as a primary form of I.D.

We got rid of that.

So so here's why It's a bad idea to repeal college IDs.

These are photo IDs.

You get to have a government I.D.

to get a college I.D.

So these are just secondary to that.

I went to college 30 years ago.

I had to prove who I was to get a college I.D.

with my photo on it.

It's not gotten any more lax since then.

These are perfectly adequate.

They've been proved adequate.

We've had no fraud coming out of people faking college IDs.

The reason this is in the law is because I help write the law.

And I looked at every case in America where a photo I.D.

law had been challenged and the ones that had been struck down didn't have a college I.D.

exception.

And the ones that were upheld by courts did have it.

And I want a law that actually is on the books and enforced versus just a talking point.

So, unfortunately, we've seen some politics recently.

And so folks facing primaries want to go out and say, oh, yeah, we did this and that, but I've been the customer service business.

I actually have to run this election and I want to have a smooth election where people are confused by what is isn't an ID And I also want election that we don't have our photo I.D.

law struck down for.

I won't actually enforce this going into a presidential election.

So you think this would subject Kentucky to litigation if we were to include this into the law about striking student IDs?

Yeah, I've already been sued three times and we won every case because we had this threat in a way that would pass muster with the courts.

If we undo that, which we've very carefully negotiated and wrote, if we didn't do that, we could lose our law entirely.

Secretary Adams also talks about other election related legislation that's being discussed here in the state capitol, and he talks about civics education and what he's pushing for there.

We'll bring you those comments and a future broadcast of Kentucky Edition.