Kentucky secretary of state discusses voter registration trends

FRANKFORT, Ky. – In 2025, Kentucky voters had a break from the hectic schedule of an election year.

But that is all about to change as 2026 will be a busy year for voters. The Secretary of State’s Office recently released new statistics about voters in this state showing some interesting trends. More people, especially the younger generation, are registering as independents.

“Something that’s unique about Generation Z is they’re not joiners. They don’t want to join organizations, whether it’s civic organizations, churches, political parties. You see a huge difference between Gen Z and, say, my generation, Gen X or my parents generation, the baby boomers. We were joiners. We wanted to join stuff, and they just don’t, they’re very independent minded, lowercase ‘I,’ so they’re not, they don’t all belong to one clinical movement. They don’t all believe one certain set of facts or political theories. They don’t all have the same viewpoints about public policy,” said Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams.

The percentage of independent Kentucky voters has increased from 10 to 11%, but only about 6% of independents vote, leaving some big questions come Election day.

“Independents have a great deal of potential to basically dictate who wins and loses every office, the question is, are they going to live up to their potential by actually showing up to vote or not,” Adams said.

While many Americans are increasingly losing their identity among the mainstream parties, there are some drawback. Kentucky will hold primaries on May 19, but those primaries will only be open for those registered as Republican or Democrat.

Voter rolls have also been scrubbed, with the state taking off 750,000 names from the rolls. In Warren County, the rolls have gone from about 97,000 to 91,000. But while the Secretary’s office has faced lawsuits surrounding the rolls, Adams says it’s important to keep the rolls as accurate as possible.

“Well, there’s no excuse for government records to be wrong. I want to be right about everything that I can when it comes to election integrity. And I don’t want people who are dead on our rolls, people who moved away, or passed away, or have been put away under our laws. They shouldn’t be on our rolls anymore. Before I got to office, our state was sued and lost in federal court. It was found that we were deficient in following federal law. Our voter rolls were so dirty. So I worked really hard for six years now to get these rolls accurate. We’ve taken three quarters of a million voters off of our rolls,” Adams said of the Kentucky voter rolls.

The Secretary of State is also urging Kentucky voters to educate themselves on the candidates running for office, what position they are running for and what stances they take. There were a few instances in early November were Kentucky voters were asking how they could vote in races not taking place in Kentucky.

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