A lawsuit filed in federal court on Friday challenges the procedure used by Kentucky officials to remove voters from the registration rolls, claiming it violates federal voter rights protections.
Kentuckyians for the Commonwealth filed the lawsuit Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, naming as defendants Secretary of State Michael Adams and members of the Kentucky Board of Elections, all of whom were sued in their official capacities.
The lawsuit alleges that Kentucky’s election law, as amended by House Bill 574 in 2021, violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
“The NVRA was enacted to protect citizens of the United States from discriminatory and unfair registration laws, with particular emphasis on practices that negatively impact voter turnout among minority groups, including racial minorities,” the lawsuit states. “To this end, the NVRA establishes, among other things, standards and procedures to ensure the accuracy of voter registrations, including safeguards to prevent the removal of still-eligible voters.”
Under federal law, if an elections administrator finds that a voter is not eligible to vote in his or her jurisdiction because he or she has moved, the administrator cannot cancel the voter registration unless the person is first notified in writing and given the chance to respond, the lawsuit says.
“As currently written, Kentucky law circumvents these requirements and allows administrators to remove voters without any notice, opportunity to respond, or waiting period, which could lead to the erroneous and illegal removal of eligible voters,” said Kentuckians for the Commonwealth in a press release on Friday. .
When the Board of Elections is notified that a voter has registered to vote in a new local or state jurisdiction outside of Kentucky, the Board of Elections must remove that person’s name from voter registration records within five days, unless the election books registration is closed for an election, according to the lawsuit.
“The statute directs the State Board to cancel voter registration solely based on information provided by out-of-state officials, without ever attempting to contact the voter, and to do so within 5 days,” the lawsuit says.
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth is asking the court to issue a permanent injunction prohibiting the state “from canceling voter registration without following required procedures.”
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, which works to change “unjust political, economic and social systems,” says in the lawsuit that it has registered more than 2,000 new voters ahead of the 2023 gubernatorial race and expects to register even more people this year ahead of the presidential election. “To that end, KFTC is hiring at least 15 people statewide who will support its voter registration program,” the lawsuit states.
“Currently in Kentucky, a voter may not know they have been improperly removed from the rolls until they show up at the polls to vote. And by then it is too late – the voter is disenfranchised,” Beauregard Patterson, an attorney with the Fair Elections Center who represents Kentuckians across the Commonwealth, said in the statement.
“Purging Kentuckians who have registered to vote from registration rolls, in violation of the NVRA, will disproportionately impact Kentuckians most likely to move: low-wage young people, BIPOC, and other groups marginalized by systems designed to silence their voices,” said Ben Carter, an attorney with the Kentucky Equal Justice Center who also represents Kentuckians for the Commonwealth in the litigation.
Kentucky House Bill 574, cited in the lawsuit, made permanent some of the election procedures that were first implemented to facilitate voting during the pandemic, including allowing countywide vote centers where any registered voter in a county can vote and allowing entry early- person who votes during three days, including a Saturday, before election day. The bill also allowed county clerks to have drop boxes for people who don’t want to mail in ballots.
