Let's Find Common Ground - How States Hold Fair Elections. Secretaries of State Michael Adams and Steve Hobbs

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

Until recently most of us outside of state government didn’t know much about the role of Secretary of State, the state’s top election official. We simply didn’t think about it. But since 2020, election laws and procedures have been in the spotlight – and election officials have come under attack.  In this episode of Let’s Find Common Ground, we meet Democrat Steve Hobbs, Secretary of State for Washington, and Republican Michael Adams, Secretary of State for Kentucky.  Kentucky is a vote-in-person state, while Washington has voting by mail and at the dropbox. But no matter how people vote, suspicion of the entire process is rife. In recent years both men have encountered election deniers and faced threats to themselves and their staff. “These abuses, even if they’re not full-fledged threats of violence - it adds up,” says Michael Adams, “and it begins to really lay some strain on our election process. Hear what each of our guests is doing to protect democracy in his state, why being part of the Electronic Registration Information System (ERIC) is important to them, and how volunteers play a vital role in free and fair elections. 

For a long time, most of us, no matter where we lived, didn't give much thought to the role of our state's leading election official, the Secretary of State. After all, until recently, the mechanics of how elections were held seem kind of boring. Then everything changed, since 2020 elections have been in the spotlight along with the officials who run them. 20 elections have been in the spotlight along with the officials who run them. This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley Melntite. And I'm Richard Davies. Free and fair elections are right at the heart of our democracy, but with trust in such short supply, the role of the Secretary of State has become a lot more challenging. Our guest

today knows this firsthand. In this episode we meet Democrat Steve Hobbs, Secretary of State for Washington, and Republican Michael Adams, Secretary of State for Kentucky. Michael Adams was the first in his family to get a college degree and became an attorney specializing in election law. He became Secretary of State in 2020. Steve Hobbs began his career in the Army and spent 15 years as a state senator before being elected Secretary of State last year.

Our first question was from Michael. In his job as Secretary of State, exactly what does he do? The responsibilities that our office has are on the country differ by state law, but typically we do three things. Number one, we are literally the Secretary of the State with the Chief Executive Records for our constituents. I have to attest to the acts of the governor or keep a register of those every order that he signs, every bill that he signs.

Number two, we're typically the Chief Business Official of our states, and so businesses that do action in our states, they all register and report with our offices. And then last but not least, typically, we're also the Chief Election Officials of our states. And that last bit, Chief Election Officials of your states is what has been controversial, right, Steve Hops? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I have about 350 employees.

Elections make up about 25 employees, but that gives me all the heartache, all the heart burn, all the tough questions from the media. It's probably why you wanted to do this podcast. But I also have a very varied profile. And like the secretary said, it's different in each state. So not only do I have elections and also the secretary. So all the legislative matters that we have to record, but we have corporations, charities, we have Washington State Library.

We have the archives, we have to record, but we have corporations, charities, we have Washington State Library, we have the archives, we have a legacy, so we actually put out books on our state's history and in displays and we go around to different museums and we have community-focused programs. So very varied, I know that previous sectors in my state and I've heard it from other sectors of state, they call it the junk-drow of state government. I'm not sitting by that because obviously I got hit on it during an election. But that's the joke that we use. Because the legislature, when they come up with different ideas, it's like, oh, where are we going to put this?

Oh, we'll just put in the secretary of state's office. Well, you're right, though. We are going to talk a bit about elections in this interview. I will admit, because being able to hold fair elections is one of the most fundamental principles in our democracy. Can you talk about why this is so important to you personally? Yeah, on my end, it's pretty simple because my background, you know, I served in the military. I took an oath to serve, protect and defend the United States and its democracy and serving overseas both in Coastville

in Iraq. I saw these very fragile democracies under attack. And I was there during the elections. In fact, I was there to support the elections in both those countries. And I saw the same thing elections. In fact, I was there to support the elections in both those countries. And I saw the same thing I'm seeing now, right? Misinformation, trying to stop the elections, people threatening other people.

So unfortunately, we're kind of seeing it now. But that's why, to me, I'm very vested in this. Secretary Adams? Yeah, for myself, I'll note, in my state, my two predecessors, they were both business lawyers. Part of the course was to run for this office with the business background and talk about the business issues. And that was true through 2019.

I'm really the first person to run for this job on a voting rights and election integrity platform that's pretty unusual actually for our state. But I think you're going to see a lot more of that around the country as the election issues become more controversial and more high profile. I'm sure you'd answer this question yes, which is, are elections well run in your state? And assuming you do say yes, why? I'll begin with you, Secretary of State Adams. Well, I sure hope so. I'm on the ballot this year.

I do think they are run and they were run well before I got here and they continued to be well run because they're not run by one person, whoever is in this office certainly can be helpful but it can tuck you in, it takes an army of 15,000 people to run an election. We rely on of course at the top we have a secretary of state but we also have a bipartisan state board of elections. We have a bipartisan county board of elections in each of our 120 counties and each of our voting locations. Every precinct by statute has to have a mix of Democrats and Republicans running the polls. And I think that's one of the strengths of our system in Kentucky is that it's bipartisan. There's checks and balances.

People perceive that it's going to be fair, but also because we incorporate so many people. That number one, I think, gets a sense of buy-in from the public. But number two, just makes it logistically impossible to see an election. We have very few instances of allegations of fraud and when they occur, we of course investigate and prosecute them. But you did actually, I believe, that when you were re-elected this past spring, you were up against at least one person who was pretty vocal that they thought that the election 2020 election was rigged, right? Yeah, I had a couple of opponents that came from sort of that fringe of my party. And it felt good to win.

It felt good to have that essentially as an issue before the public and to see the public side with me, specifically registered Republican primary voters in a closed primary. And so my hope is that other secutaries of state around the country, especially in my Republican party, will see that outcome and say, you know, I can handle myself. I can tell the truth.

I can go out there and explain how elections are run freely and fairly. And it's going to be OK. I don't have to worry about cow towing to fringe people. And you're a Republican, but you worked with Kentucky's Democratic governor to expand voting access. I mean, why did you do that? Especially with a lot of Republicans in your state and I'm certain other states who may have opposed that notion. Yeah, it's really hard to do anything on a bipartisan basis today in America. If you do, then your side doesn't really trust you.

I try to take advantage of that's the way to phrase it of the COVID situation and try to bring some good out of it. And part of that was working across the aisle with our Democratic governor. He and I both were elected at the same time and very close races. And I thought it was appropriate to work with a Democrat, especially because we had a big election in 2020, like every state did. And I thought if I just went out there by myself and did stuff, people would say, oh, the Republicans are trying to rig the election.

I thought it was important to have the governor with me for us to do everything together across party lines and be seen doing that, and that would contribute to both sides accepting the pretty significant changes that we implemented to our process. You could talk, he's only had one data vote and virtually no absentee voting for 170 years. And then suddenly, these new guys come to town

and change everything. If I was important that people see a DNR together at these press conferences and have more confidence that this was not being done in a way to try to tip the balance toward one party or the other. And Secretary Hobbs, have you had to deal with election deniers? And if so, how have you handled that in your state? Oh yeah, I know. I certainly have. And the best way of handling election deniers and if so how have you handled that in your state? Oh yeah, I know I certainly have and the best way of handling election deniers is with the truth, right? What we have done in the Secretary States office here and just talking to my colleagues across the other states and by the way our local folks really do the groundwork, our counties

do a lot of the groundwork on elections. But we've kind of taken it for granted. In the past, we've always said, hey, don't forget to vote. Put your ballot in the mail, or in my state, or put in the drop box. And we kind of left it that. But now we've got to take it a step further because the rise of election denialism and misinformation,

we've got to say, hey, don't forget to put your ballot in the mail. But did you know that the tabulation machines are not connected to the internet? Did you know that anybody can come into a county office and witness the vote count happening with their own eyes? So we've got to take a step further. Something that I know about in my state, Secretary Adams knows about his state, but maybe the general public doesn't know about. We just got to do a better job of communicating that because we kind of took it for granted.

Elections used to be kind of a boring thing, right? It's like it just happened. We just live with it and seen the results, but now that has changed obviously in the last couple of years. And by the way, my hat's off on Secretary Adams. And the pendulum will swing, right? And 2,000 Democrats were saying their elections were rigged

if we all remember GORVI Bush. And now it's swung the other way. But it's these extremists on both ends that make it hard for elected officials to stand up. And Secretary Adams to stand up, as well as Republican secretaries in Georgia and Utah. And a few others that push back on this narrative. And by tell you, it is really hard to go against your own party. It's easier to go against the party opposite from you,

but it is really hard to go against your own party. So thank you very much, Secretary Adams. And you want to respond further? That's a pretty big compliment coming from a Democratic elected official. Yeah, I can't improve on Secretary Hobbes compliment of me, but thank you. It's pretty painful. I lost supporters over it, friends over it, donors over it, you know, those things that those things add up, they create a lot of strain. But I think that we were proved right with the decisions that we made.

And not because of any engineering on my part, but after we made those changes through emergency powers that I was granted, the Republicans did better. They did better when voting was easier. And I think on some level, that's not that surprising, because the parties have shifted who their bases are. When I was growing up, the working class, when we were in the Democratic, My family were all Democrats, union members. And now those people tend

to be more mixed or somewhat even Republican, depending on the jurisdiction. So I didn't, I wasn't especially shocked that Republicans did better when it was easier to vote, but I think that actually cut back on some of the backlash because some folks incorrectly presume that if you make voting easier, then they're going to have all this fraud or it's going to help the other side. It didn't really make that much of a difference. Voting methods are not ideological. Washington State votes by mail, but so does Utah.

Their politics are extremely different, right? There's nothing that's Republican or Democratic about voting in person or on election day or early or by mail or absentee or any of that. Steve Hobbs, you're in Washington state, one of five states, I believe, that has mail-in voting. How do you reassure people who are well-intentioned and who are concerned about the safety of voting that everybody who does a mail-in ballot is who they say they are. Because I can imagine, for instance, your kid's off to college, and a ballot arrives,

and it's got your kid's name on it, and he's 21 or 22, and you send it in for him, so you have two votes rather than one Well the great thing about this state is we've been doing vote by mail since 1983 and we've been most our counties did it in 2005 and of course now it's statewide officially was in in 2011 all the signatures are checked right and we have a good voter database We're also part of Eric which I know that's another question later down the road

but we do catch people that try to vote for somebody else when their signatures don't match because we have a very good voter database And the great thing about our state with vote by mail is you have 18 days to kind of figure it out who you want to vote for and For those overseas who's serving our country, they get some more time, those ballots go out earlier. So, you know, there's a paper trail and the fact that every signature is checked, we haven't had any instances of fraud and those that, like I said, if they vote for somebody,

we're gonna find out, we find that. And then we, you know, we go back to him, go, Hey, your signature was rejected because it doesn't match what we have here. In Washington state around Seattle and Tacoma, more heavily populated areas, they tend to go Democrat. And the eastern part of washington which is largely rural is heavily republican i would think steve hobs that mail-in voting actually made benefit republicans more than democrats because those rural voters have longer to go to get to their polling stations

yeah i i would say that benefits everyone before secretary state i was a state senator i believe it was twenty I was Secretary of State, I was a State Senator. I believe it was 2010, was kind of a Republican year. And guess what? I went from the majority of the minority, right? And that was because a lot of Republicans turned out and also because people were ticked off with Democratic policies, right?

So I don't buy into some of the myths I've heard about there, but well, you do mail-in voting then, you know, one side's going to do better than the other. That's not the case. It's the case is if your your party has really bad policies and the people are fed up, they're going to throw you out. That's basically what it is. But it does make it easier though, right? If you're in a rural community, you don't have to drive to a polling station, just walk across street and drop your ballot in your mailbox. And that's what makes it easy. And the fact that you have 18 days to kind of figure that out. And the fact that your ballot as long as it comes in on that Tuesday before 8 p.m. it's going to get counted.

You're listening to secretaries of state Steve Hobbes and Michael Adams on Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley. I'm Richard. We're the podcasters here at Common Ground Committee, but there's a lot more going on than Just Our Show. Yeah, check out our YouTube channel for all the latest videos, including recent live events on climate, the state of our democracy, and guns. Now batch-while conversation with Michael Adams and Steve Hobbs. Steve Hobbs, you've mentioned Erick, which is the electronic registration information center.

What is Erick exactly? And why has it become so controversial? Think of it as a system that talks to different databases and that there are several states that are part of it. So let's say if one of my constituents moves to Secretary Adams state and they registered there, we're going to know about it, right? And if somebody dies, we're going to know about it. And so it really cleans up the voter rolls. Also, it puts out notices to people who are eligible to vote and ask them, hey, you want

to be registered voter. And I tell you, I'm very glad that we're on Eric. It is a good system to prevent fraud. And again, I commend Secretary Adams for standing up because right now there's a misinformation campaign pressuring secretaries to remove themselves. Secretary Adams, I don't know how, I mean, you must put on bulletproof vest when you go to some of your party meetings because I know when I went into a party meeting to talk about things, I'd get blasted. I'll put in my two cents and reiterate what Secretary Hobbs said. This is a great device.

It's not something that was set up by a private individual or shady group. This is us. It's the Secretary's estate that composed Eric. It's Secretary Hobbes and me and our colleagues of both parties. It's simply an information sharing partnership and it gets this information that we don't have on our own. So let me give you an example. Eric and Tucky, in my three years in office, we've taken about 330,000 voters off the rolls. We have about 3.4 million registered. So that's almost 10% that we've removed. And these are people that piled up for a long time, that we are under a federal court decree to get the roles cleaned up. It's been there for several years. It's a long swag of a process. A lot of those people, they lived in Kentucky and they passed away. And we've taken those folks off. But a lot of Kentuckyans move away. They especially moved to our neighboring states or to Florida, and then they re-registered to vote sometimes, sometimes they pass away, and I don't have a mechanism to get that information.

And unless I have a way to communicate with another state and trade that information, then we can't cross-check our roles and make sure that they're accurate. If you've got roles that are not legitimate that they don't have accurate information, you do create an avenue for fraud You don't see a ton of it. There have been some states where there have been Criminal cases brought against people who voted in the name of a dead person. That's a real thing It's not frequent, but it happens occasionally But also it creates longer lines when people go in person to vote if the roles are glutted with people that then aren't there anymore Yeah, in fact our state state, we updated just last year, 175,000 voters were updated because

of Eric. I was just going to ask you, Steve Hobbs, you alluded to this a little bit earlier, but you've said in the past that that has been something of a misinformation campaign launched at Eric by some Republicans. Can you just elaborate a little bit on that? Tell us more about what you mean. Yeah, it's the extreme, right? It's not all Republicans.

Let's make that clear. But it's on the far, far extreme. And we have our far extreme folks as well. But basically this misinformation campaign says that Eric is tied to George Soros somehow leans a certain way and helps out Democrats only and that is just not the case. And unfortunately, so on secretaries have succumbed to this and removed their states from Eric. And that's unfortunate because it weakens it, right?

I mean, we're trying to protect ourselves against fraud, so more states that come on board. It's better for all of us. It's actually a little cheaper if all the states would get on board. And quite frankly, I can't think of any other system that they can go to, the state can go to, to maintain their voter rolls and have accurate data. Have both of you had instances where the people who work for you and the local and the county election officials faced threats or behavior that's really worrying by some voters. Secretary Adams? Yeah, I've gotten death threats for years. My staff have gotten sporadically. I'm not aware of any local official that has got a threat, but I will tell you this in 2020, when

we had 2020, the stress, of course, was just through the roof on all of our election officials stayed at an local. And I had two of our 120 Kenny Clerks quit. I just couldn't take the stress anymore. In 2022, I had about 23 quit. And 2022 was an election year where they could retire, the term ended. And so about 16 of them, I think it was retired. But another nine just walked off the job, before their term even ended that year. They just couldn't take it anymore. To go from 2 in 2020 to nine in 2022, tells you something.

And Secretary Hobbs may agree with this. What I saw in 2020 was a Georgia and a Michigan and a Wisconsin problem, Pennsylvania problem. By 2022, it was a 50 state problem in terms of all of us in all 50 states, us and our local folks as well, being abused and harassed. This made it harder to get people to run for county clerk in Kentucky,

that's made it harder to get people to be poll workers in Kentucky. These abuses, even if they're not full fledged, for debts of violence, it adds up. And it begins to really lay some strain on our election process. Yeah, we had a situation where an election director got doxed. Secretary Wyman got threatened with her life.

We have our county otters and mystery elections here in our state and they were threatened with their lives. Volunteers are sometimes hard to get because they feel like they might be threatened. So it's a serious matter. In fact, this state, we are trying to push a bill to increase the penalty on threatening an election worker. And hopefully we can get that through.

And hopefully, at the federal level, I know that there's been talks about doing that and they should do that. Because, and I'm sure maybe Secretary Adams could agree to this, but most of your election workers during election time at the county level, they're like senior citizens, right? And they're just trying to do their part to get democracy running, protect democracy,

the election effort, be part of their community, and for them to be threatened with their lives because some group are believing in some of these lives it's not right it's not good for our democracy. You must be wrong that dreading the 2024 election. Well we're trying to prepare and we've got a lot of stuff in place to prepare for that. I may or may not still be here so we'll see. Do you prepare for that? I may or may not still be here, so we'll see. You're running for re-election. Yeah. Yeah, what was I thinking?

Yeah. Well, to your point, a presidential election is a different animal completely. The emotions are much higher. The turnout's higher, too. So that's good, I guess, but the emotions are much higher. And also, the suspicions that people have against other people I think are inflated as well. Seriously, what do you think the outlook is for next year for 2024? I'd say the biggest challenge that we have is not this stuff that's certainly always present.

The biggest challenge we have is very practical, which is how do I find enough locations for voters? We have mostly impersonal voting in Kentucky. How do I have enough locations for voters? We have mostly impersonal voting in Kentucky. How do I have enough locations for voters? And how do I have enough volunteers to run those locations? And we've seen a decline in both of those offerings. Some of it tied to COVID, some of it tied to the environment out there, but also this has been going on since before I was elected to 2019.

There's been a decline in civic engagement in volunteering in every form. That's why it's almost entirely senior citizens that are working the polls. They come from a generation when you volunteer, you play the role in your community, you helped. And younger generations, Gen X like me, my generation really hasn't done that.

My daughter's generation either. And so that's a big problem just having enough personnel to run this thing because it's almost all volunteers. Also locations are getting harder to get. Yeah, for my state because we're a mail-in, we don't have to rely so much on polling places at all actually. And so very little like location finding and also a very low amount of volunteers or election workers we don't need as many. But my concern right going into the next year with presidential election is the amount of misinformation that comes out so trying to counter it with the truth with what happens with your ballot. Also the

cyber threat that happens we had to double the size of our cybersecurity team. I'm concerned about overseas actors like Russia and China and other actors out there that want to disrupt our elections. They basically want Americans tearing each other apart. That's why we are trying to be vigilant. We're trying to lean forward by ensuring that our cybersecurity is strong, by letting the public know what goes on with our elections so that people are tempted to be radicalized by this misinformation that's out there.

In fact, we even passed the bill recently that went after deep fakes because I think deep fakes are something that we could see not just by campaigns, but by overseas actors and by other political groups that could really cause more chaos that we simply don't want in our election. Secretary Adams, you don't have mail-in voting in Kentucky, and how do you feel about it? Well, I think every state needs to find the right voting process that appeals to its electorate. In 2020, we made mail-in voting available to anyone because of COVID. We wanted to avoid

lines at the polls. And even though everyone was eligible, most chose not to use it. They wanted to go vote in person. It's really interesting. We do mail-in ballot state, you know, that's mail-in here, but a majority of people drop their ballot in the drop box. On election day? Yeah, on election day. In fact, it was like 70% in 2020 and then 62% in 2022. I was thinking about myself, maybe because, you know, I've been involved with politics for a long time in my life, but it's like, You know, I've been involved with politics for a long time in my life, but it's like, I could just walk across the street and put it in my mailbox. But instead, I take the time, drive downtown, get a cup of coffee, see my friends, all that, and drop it in the drop box.

It's kind of like a polling place. So before we end this interview, Steve Hobbs, I've got to ask you about something I'm seeing in our video feed from your office. I think it's a target behind you. What is it? Target. Is that a phrase, me or what? What is that?

Well, you see it's a Captain America shield. Next to it is Thor's hammer, Mule Nier. You know, I'm a big nerd. So I have a lot of Marvel stuff around here. So Secretary Adams, if you want to come come by I can show around all the nerds I'm more of a DC Comics guy. Sorry People even either Marvel DC or I so on DC. Oh My see this this person's over

But I do have two I have a two DC Comics displayed here, only two, because I want to appear by person during election time, so I got to reach across there. So I'll let you check out my DC Comics of that habit. Common Ground over comics! There you go. Secretary of State for Washington Steve Hobbs and Secretary of State for Kentucky, Michael Adams, on Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley Melntite. And I'm Richard Davies. Thanks for listening.

This podcast is part of the Democracy Group. podcast is part of the Democracy Group.