New York sued over voter roll purges

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York is wrongly purging voter rolls to remove the names of supposedly inactive voters, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday on behalf of a government watchdog group.

The legal challenge against state elections officials argues the state's purging policy violates federal law governing how states can scrub names from their list of registered voters.

"New York's outdated policies disenfranchise tens of thousands of eligible voters in clear violation of the National Voter Registration Act," said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit on behalf of the good government group Common Cause-New York.