The Long Game

Top Republican Elections Official Who Has Advised Vice President Pence Says Trump Voting Fraud Claims are "Not Feasible"

08.23.2020 - By Jon WardPlay

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Michael G. Adams is Kentucky's Secretary of State, the top elections official in that state. He is a Harvard Law graduate who was a senior lawyer at the Justice Department in the George W. Bush administration. He built a private practice over the last 15 years advising major Republican clients on how to navigate the thicket of election laws, and working to help Republicans win elections across the country. He was hired by the Republican Governor’s Association in 2007 as their general counsel, and over the next decade advised “candidates, PACs, issue groups, donors and political consultants, in connection with federal, state and local elections,” according to his law firm website.   In 2017 Pence’s PAC, Great America Committee, hired him for legal and strategic advice on compliance with election law. The last payment to Adams’ law firm, Chalmers & Adams, was on June 24. 

Fraud in elections, Adams said, "does happen, but it doesn't happen on a widespread basis when it does happen. It typically happens in a small town.”   “But you're not going to see widespread fraud in a presidential or a Senate or a governor's race. It's just not feasible. And it hasn't been [feasible] in seventy or eighty years," Adams told me.

We talk in depth about why that's the case: how ballots are kept secure, and how mail ballots are tracked by elections officials. Republican voters are also very supportive of drop boxes, Adams said.

We also talked about the need for younger Americans to start signing up as poll workers as an act of duty and patriotism. "We need to run an election in Kentucky and disproportionately, [elections officials are] in their seventies and eighties,” he said. “And my generation, Gen X, hasn't stepped up to replace our aging or workers. That's not a problem just for today. That's a problem going forward for this decade."

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