INDIANAPOLIS -- Indiana voter lists will be improperly purged and lead to voter confusion under recently passed state legislation, the Indiana NAACP and League of Women Voters of Indiana allege in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday.
The two organizations sued Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson and two members of the Indiana Election Commission over the passage of Senate Bill 442, an omnibus measure that deals with election matters and was signed into law by Gov. Eric Holcomb.
As of Wednesday, Lawson’s office had not responded to the complaint filed in the U.S. Court for the Southern District of Indiana.
The lawsuit alleges that the provisions violate the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 by removing voters from registration rolls without giving them public notice. The NRVA lists certain requirements before removing a voter from the rolls. For example, the voter can’t be removed merely because an election official thinks the voter has moved; a formal notice must be sent to the voter’s address.
Under the new law, the same database is checked and a voter is immediately removed from the county rolls if it’s found that the address has changed. But the information is unreliable, the lawsuit alleges.
As signed into law, the bill uses a Kansas-based Crosscheck program, which reportedly has records of more than 100 million voters, to identify voters who have moved and registered in another state.
But that procedure doesn’t take NRVA requirements into consideration, the lawsuit alleges.
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