Justice Department sues Alabama over its effort to remove more than 3,000 names from voter rolls too close to election

(CNN) — The Justice Department sued Alabama on Friday over the state’s recent effort to remove more than 3,000 names from its voter rolls, arguing the move violated federal law prohibiting such action from taking place too close to an election.

Alabama GOP Secretary of State Wes Allen announced on August 13 that he had begun a process of removing 3,251 individuals previously identified as being noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls – even as he acknowledged the possibility that some of those people have since become naturalized citizens who are eligible to vote.

But in an 18-page lawsuit filed in federal court in Alabama, the Justice Department argued that the so-called voter roll purge ran afoul of the National Voter Registration Act, which governs how and when most states can execute large-scale changes to their lists of registered voters. The federal law requires states to observe a 90-day quiet period during which officials cannot “systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.”

“While more than 700 individuals impacted by the Program have since re-registered and returned to active status in the State’s voter registration records, potentially several hundred or even thousands more registered, eligible voters from the list – U.S. citizens – remain in inactive status, stand to be harmed, and risk disenfranchisement just weeks before the upcoming federal election,” DOJ attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.

“The State’s unlawful actions here have confused and deterred U.S. citizens who are fully eligible to vote – the very scenario that Congress tried to prevent when it enacted the Quiet Period Provision,” the complaint said, adding that actions like Alabama’s “are more error-prone than other forms of list maintenance.”

As CNN has previously reported, exhaustive studies from both liberal and conservative think tanks have found only a tiny number of examples of noncitizens voting in elections where they are ineligible. Nonpartisan election law experts say it’s almost always caught when it does happen, and that it isn’t a widespread problem plaguing US elections.

The new lawsuit expands the legal fight against Alabama’s actions, which had been challenged earlier this month by voters in the state, including several impacted by the purge. The judge overseeing the two cases said on Saturday that she had consolidated them “in the light of the obvious time-sensitive nature of these lawsuits and the need for judicial efficiency.”

Among other things, the Justice Department is asking the court to reverse the state’s actions for all the eligible voters impacted by the purge so that they can “vote unimpeded on Election Day.”

“As Election Day approaches, it is critical that Alabama redress voter confusion resulting from its list maintenance mailings sent in violation of federal law,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement. “The Justice Department will continue to use all the tools it has available to ensure that the voting rights of every eligible voter are protected.”

Allen declined to comment on the lawsuit but said in a statement that he had a “duty” to stop noncitizens from voting in US elections.

“I was elected Secretary of State by the people of Alabama, and it is my Constitutional duty to ensure that only American citizens vote in our elections,” Allen said. “As to the question regarding the Department of Justice’s lawsuit, this office does not comment on pending litigation where the Secretary of State is a named defendant.”

CNN’s Marshall Cohen and Ethan Cohen contributed to this report. 

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