Agency fines Alison Grimes $10,000 for handling of voter data as KY secretary of state

Alison Lundergan Grimes must pay $10,000 in fines for improperly ordering the downloading and distribution of voter registration data from her public office while she was Kentucky’s secretary of state, the Executive Branch Ethics Commission announced Friday.

The ethics commission long has been investigating Grimes, once a rising star in the Kentucky Democratic Party who served in Frankfort from 2011 to 2019.

In early 2019, the Herald-Leader and ProPublica published a series of 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’ improper 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 left office that year. Her father, former Kentucky Democratic Party Chairman Jerry Lundergan, later went to federal prison on campaign finance charges because of illegal assistance he provided to her Senate campaign. Lundergan was released in January, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

The ethics commission found Grimes guilty of two violations of the executive branch ethics code. Each count carried a $5,000 fine.

According to the ethics commission, Grimes told 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.

While they were carrying out Grimes’ orders, the ethics commission said, officials used their personal email accounts to discuss their actions, not their state government email accounts.

“As secretary of state, (Grimes) would know the requirements of the law administered. It would be disingenuous and incredible to suggest that she did not,” the ethics commission wrote. Grimes “was not laboring under a good faith misunderstanding of the law when she downloaded and distributed the voting lists.”

Grimes will appeal the ethics decision to Franklin Circuit Court, one of her attorneys, Jon Salomon, said Friday.

“After investigating former Secretary Grimes for half a decade, the Executive Branch Ethics Commission chose not to hold a hearing in this matter or present its own evidence,” Salomon said in a written statement. “Although the commission admits that it did not prove two of its charges, Secretary Grimes believes that the commission was required to dismiss its complaint in full.”