Judge reverses ethics charge against Alison Lundergan Grimes
Former Kentucky secretary of state Alison Lundergan Grimes has been cleared of ethics charges against her related to her access and sharing of voter data.
Franklin Circuit Judge Phillp Shepherd ruled Monday against charges brought against Grimes by the Executive Branch Ethics Commission. The commission previously fined Grimes $10,000 and reprimanded her for ordering the downloading and distribution of voter registration data from her public office while she was secretary of state.
Shepherd’s ruling reversed the charges, meaning that Grimes won’t have to pay the fine.
The commission’s charges came after an early 2019 series from the Herald-Leader and ProPublica. The two news organizations published stories on Grimes’ conduct as a two-term secretary of state and 2014 Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate.
The stories reported on Grimes’ use of the Voter Registration System. They also showed how Grimes gained unprecedented authority over the State Board of Elections, resulting in her ability to push through a no-bid contract with a company owned by a political donor and delay action on a consent decree mandating that she clean the state’s voter rolls.
Grimes, 45, was a young star in the Kentucky Democratic Party. A two-term secretary of state, she withstood a red wave in 2015 when she was one of just two Democrats to win statewide alongside current Gov. Andy Beshear when he began his elected career as attorney general.
In 2014, Grimes launched an unsuccessful challenge against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY.
Grimes’ father, former Kentucky Democratic Party Chairman Jerry Lundergan, went to federal prison on campaign finance charges because of illegal assistance he provided to her Senate campaign. He was released in January, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
What were the charges?
The commission had accused Grimes of misusing her access to the state’s Voter Registration System in downloading and sharing voter information without following established government processes or paying the required fees.
It cited Grimes for telling her state employees on state time to download voter registration records onto flash drives for her own benefit and to distribute them in customized formats to selected Democratic Party candidates.
Grimes ordered this done without filing the proper paperwork to access voter data, complying with the Kentucky Open Records Act’s rules — such as redacting voters’ addresses and phone numbers — or collecting mandatory fees, the ethics commission said.
“There is no evidence that the requests were processed in conformity with any governmental process,” the ethics commission wrote in its final order.
What did the judge say?
Shepherd called both charges against Grimes “arbitrary and without the support of substantial evidence.”
The ruling does not dispute Grimes’ actions, which were cited in the commission’s charges. However, Shepherd argues that the commission did not identify how her actions were illegal or unethical.
He also points out that no other candidate or campaign, Republican or Democratic, made a similar request for data and that all the data Grimes provided was in the public domain.
“It is undisputed that the Secretary of State is designated by statute as the ‘chief election official of the Commonwealth.’ It is unclear how the Commission can penalize the Commonwealth’s chief election official for having access to voter data, or downloading it to a flash drive when it has failed to identify any illegal or unethical use of such data,” Shepherd wrote.
He also pointed out the conduct in question occurred more than five years after the commission filed its initial complaint, meaning that the commission’s final order failed to comply with the applicable statute of limitations.
