A lawsuit filed Friday in federal court challenges the process Kentucky officials use to remove voters from registration rolls, claiming it violates federal voter rights protections.
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth filed the lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, naming Secretary of State Michael Adams and members of the Kentucky Board of Elections, all of whom are charged 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 American citizens from discriminatory and unfair voter registration laws, with particular emphasis on those practices that negatively impact voter participation among minority groups, including racial minorities,” the lawsuit states. “To that end, the NVRA establishes, among other things, standards and procedures to ensure the accuracy of voter registration rolls, including safeguards to prevent the purging of eligible voters.”
Under federal law, an election administrator cannot cancel a voter’s registration if he or she believes the person is ineligible to vote in his or her jurisdiction because he or she has moved. This can only be done if the person is first given written notice and an opportunity 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 result in the wrongful and unlawful removal of eligible voters,” it said. Kentuckians for the Commonwealth said in a news release 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 the voter registration rolls within five days, unless the registration books are closed for an election, the lawsuit says.
“The law stipulates that the State Council may cancel a voter’s registration solely on the basis of information provided by out-of-state officials, without ever attempting to contact the voter, and that they must do so within five days,” the lawsuit said.
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth is asking the court to issue a permanent injunction prohibiting the state from “cancelling voter registrations without following required procedures.”
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, which works to change “unfair 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 ahead of the presidential election this year. “To that end, KFTC is hiring at least 15 people across the state who will support the voter registration program,” the lawsuit says.
“Currently, a Kentucky voter may not learn they were wrongly removed from the rolls until they show up to vote. And by then, it’s too late — the voter is disenfranchised,” Beauregard Patterson, an attorney with the Fair Elections Center who represents Kentuckians before the commonwealth, said in the news release.
“Cutting Kentucky residents who have registered to vote in violation of the NVRA will disproportionately impact the Kentucky residents most likely to move: low-income, young, BIPOC, and other groups who are marginalized by systems designed to silence their voices,” said Ben Carter, an attorney with the Kentucky Equal Justice Center who also represents Kentucky residents before the Commonwealth in the lawsuit.
Kentucky’s House Bill 574, cited in the lawsuit, made permanent several election procedures first put in place to make voting easier during the pandemic, including allowing countywide polling places where any registered voter in a county can vote and allowing early in-person voting for three days, including a Saturday, before Election Day. The law also allowed county clerks to have ballot drop boxes for people who don’t want to return their ballots by mail.
