JFC
One day after SCOTUS upheld voter purging in Ohio, Trump’s Department of Justice sued Kentucky to force aggressive voter purging https://t.co/8wYASinOtm pic.twitter.com/w5Sk3PqYQ0
— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) June 15, 2018
One day after the Supreme Court upheld voter purging in Ohio, the Justice Department decided to get in on the action. The department sued the state of Kentucky on Tuesday to force it to “systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the registration records”—and Kentucky quickly agreed to comply.
The lawsuit, filed in conjunction with the conservative group Judicial Watch, alleges that Kentucky has not made “a reasonable effort to remove registrants who have become ineligible due to a change of residence.” Judicial Watch first sued Kentucky in November 2017, and the Justice Department announced it was joining the lawsuit on Tuesday. That same day, Kentucky settled the lawsuit and said it would make “a reasonable effort to remove from the statewide voter registration list the names of registrants who have become ineligible.”
This is the Trump administration’s first lawsuit against a state to force aggressive voter voter purging and could be the beginning of a new effort to curb voting rights.
“As long as I am KY’s Secretary of State, I will keep my promise to protect & defend the right to vote” and we will never remove any voter from the rolls for simply not voting.
Sec. Grimes full statement on SCOTUS’ #Husted #VotingRights decision: pic.twitter.com/8tVAvjjL4n— Alison L. Grimes (@KySecofState) June 11, 2018