One day after court upheld voter purging in Ohio, Justice Dept sued Kentucky to make it purge rolls

[Miles Archer]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/06/the-supreme-court-gave-the-green-light-to-voter-purges-trumps-justice-department-isnt-wasting-any-time/

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. In June 2017—on the same day that President Donald Trump’s controversial Election Integrity Commission asked states to hand over sensitive voter data— the Justice Department sent a letter to 44 states informing them it was reviewing their voter list maintenance procedures and asking how they planned to “remove the names of ineligible voters.” Vanita Gupta, who led the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama, called the letter “virtually unprecedented” and predicted it would lead to new voter purges.

That is happening now. The Justice Department lawsuit was filed against Kentucky’s Democratic secretary of state, Alison Lundergan Grimes, who last year vocally denounced a different Trump administration request, for voter data from all 50 states. She said at the time, “There’s not enough bourbon here in Kentucky to make this request seem sensible.”