The Kentucky Secretary of State’s office finished a voter purge Friday that cleared 127,000 people from the rolls. Secretary of State Michael Adams says the federal law requiring the purge has been on the books for 30 years.
“We have sent out mailings to voters on our rolls that we have recently believed don't live here anymore, they've moved elsewhere, they've registered to vote elsewhere, it takes time to track those folks down and to contact them. And so we've undertaken that the past three years, and it's put us in position now to remove over 100,000 inactive voters now.”
Adams says he’s confident no voters were unfairly purged and that his office followed very rigorous state and federal laws.
“These are not people who are who are voters in the regular course of practice, who are suddenly being taken off, if there is a mistake. And mistakes do occur when you're dealing with 100,000. Plus people, they can always re-register this if there’s a problem, but we don't really expect that's going to happen.”
Adams says he spend much of his time educating people about the way Kentucky’s elections work, and that he’s quite confident in the Democrats and Republics on local and state election boards.
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*Editor's note: The headline was changed to reflect that it is the State Board of Elections that carries out the purge.
