FRANKFORT, Ky. _ The chairman of the Republican Party of Kentucky on Tuesday called for a federal investigation into allegations that Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes abused her power as Kentucky's chief elections officer, chipping away at the checks and balances of Kentucky's election system.
"Kentuckians deserve to know their elections are being conducted fairly and without bias and, from the looks of Secretary Grimes' actions, that may not be the case this fall," said Mac Brown, chairman of the Kentucky GOP. "In what is sure to be a closely contested election, every vote will count and, if Secretary Grimes intends to have her finger on the scales, she needs to be stopped."
Brown's statement comes a day after Jared Dearing, executive director of the State Board of Elections, wrote a nine-page letter to members of the Board of Elections and the Executive Ethics Commission, accusing Grimes of creating a hostile work environment and ordering him and assistant executive director Jennifer Scutchfield to do things they found to be "inappropriate, unethical and potentially illegal."
Bradford Queen, communications director for Grimes, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. On Monday, he called the allegations "baseless."
"The complaint is baseless and lacks a basic understanding of the constitutional role and duties of the chief election official and chair of the Board and its staff," Queen said.
Along with calling for an investigation into Grimes, Brown asked the elections board to grant Dearing and Scutchfield whistleblower status. In his letter, Dearing, a Democrat, said he does not expect to remain in his position much longer.
"I am fairly confident that once I send this letter, any career I had or would have had as a public servant in government is over," he wrote.
On Monday, a special meeting of the State Board of Elections was called for Tuesday at 2 p.m.
Two Republican members of the board protested the start time of the meeting, questioning whether there was a proper 24-hour notice based on Kentucky's Open Meetings Act before the meeting started.
"I just feel like if we take action today we are opening up the board to litigation," said DeAnna Brangers, a Republican member of the board.
Grimes, a Democrat, said she opposed pushing the meeting back two weeks, noting that the November elections are almost two months away and saying "the functioning of the state board of elections is at issue right now."
Instead, Grimes and two Democrats on the board voted to push the meeting back to 3:04 p.m., which was 24 hours after members of the board received an email about the meeting. When they returned, Grimes said she felt that all of the requirements of the Open Meetings Act had met and quickly moved the meeting into executive session over the objections of Brangers and board member Joshua Branscum.
Grimes has been secretary of state for seven years and has made election security a chief policy concern in her tenure. Grimes is term-limited and is considering a run for attorney general or governor in 2019.
This is the second time Grimes has been accused of overstepping her authority as the chief of elections in Kentucky and the chairwoman of the State Board of Elections. In 2017, former assistant executive director Matt Selph submitted a letter to the Executive Branch Ethics Commission and the State Board of Elections containing similar allegations. He was later fired and filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the state.
Selph, a Republican, and Dearing accused Grimes of improperly accessing the state's voter registration database, which contains voters' names and addresses, precinct, gender, political party, ZIP code, date of birth, date of voter registration and five-year voting history.
Dearing's letter alleged that staffers were using the data to look up the voting records of current employees and job candidates at the State Board of Elections.
Dearing also accused Grimes of ordering him and Scutchfield to stop complying with a settlement reached in a federal court case to clean Kentucky's voter rolls.
Before Grimes took office, the secretary of state's office would send a postcard to people who had not voted for two election cycles to make sure they still lived at the address where they registered. If the postcard bounced back, the state listed the person as inactive. After a period of time, the person was purged from the rolls.
Dearing said that when he resumed that practice under the settlement agreement, Grimes called him into her office and ordered him to stop. He said when he questioned the legality of her order, her staff told him to "slow-walk" the process.
