Former Kentucky Secretary of State Faces Ethics Charges
Kentucky’s Executive Branch Ethics Commission accused Democratic former Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes of misusing her office for personal and political purposes, according to an initiating order filed by the commission on Thursday.
The news comes nearly three years after ProPublica and the Lexington Herald-Leader investigated many of the same issues in a three-part series, extensively detailing Grimes’ “questionable” and “unprecedented” use of the state’s voter registration system as well as the “power grab” that gave her unusual sway over the State Board of Elections.
Grimes did not immediately respond to a request for comment; she previously defended her conduct in comments to ProPublica at the time of the series. If found to have run afoul of the code, Grimes could face fines of $5,000 for each violation.
The Kentucky ethics commission alleges that Grimes committed two violations. First, that she “used her position to direct her subordinates to use state time and resources to download and store information from the Voter Registration System onto flash drives for a personal, private purpose without following the established processes of government to obtain the information.” And second, that before the 2016 election: “Grimes used her position to direct her subordinates to use state time and resources to engage in political activities. Grimes directed an independent contractor of her agency to create lists of newly registered democratic voters and then directed a subordinate employee to email the lists to some democratic candidates.”
Read more: https://www.propublica.org/article/former-kentucky-secretary-of-state-faces-ethics-charges