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In September 2023, Kentucky’s Office of the Attorney General agreed to sign a joint statement of stipulated facts in which they conceded the ballot integrity task force was “a discussion group” that “does not take actions or implement policy,” which is why there were relatively few substantive records.
Following the filing of this statement, American Oversight agreed to a settlement with the OAG, which led to a dismissal of the pending lawsuit.
Statement from Heather Sawyer, Executive Director of American Oversight:
“Our lawsuit confirms that the Kentucky ‘voter fraud task force’ served no investigative purpose, despite Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s and Secretary of State Michael Adams’s public statements touting the task force’s investigatory powers. It’s unfortunate that Kentucky officials falsely claimed widespread voter fraud to justify a toothless ‘task force’ and then wasted thousands of taxpayers dollars before conceding that it was only ‘a discussion group’ that did ‘not take actions or implement policy.’ Thanks to Kentucky’s Open Records law, Kentuckians now know that this so-called task force was nothing more than an expensive political stunt.”
On Tuesday, American Oversight asked a Kentucky court to order the state attorney general’s office to conduct a further search for public records related to the “Ballot Integrity Task Force” that the office created before the 2020 election to investigate and prosecute “election law violations.”
American Oversight sued the office of Attorney General Daniel Cameron in September 2020, after the office failed to release documents in response to our open records requests. In July 2022, the Franklin County Circuit Court ruled that the office must release a number of public records that it had improperly withheld related to the task force, a partnership between state election officials and law enforcement aimed at investigating and deterring incidents of supposed “voter fraud.” The court found the attorney general’s original search for records — which had turned up only 14 responsive records — was inadequate and ordered the office to conduct a more thorough search within 20 days.
Tuesday’s response and objection filed by American Oversight alerted the court that the attorney general’s subsequent records search was also inadequate, asked for an additional search, and — if the office does not comply — seeks an evidentiary hearing regarding its lack of compliance.
American Oversight first filed open records requests with the Kentucky attorney general in July 2020 for task force formation documents, meeting notices, agendas and minutes, and reports, as well as emails sent by task force members containing key terms related to voter fraud.
Kentucky’s Ballot Integrity Task Force was formed in late May 2020 and chaired by Cameron and Secretary of State Michael Adams, one of several such groups created in states across the country that purported to safeguard elections but were designed to amplify then President Donald Trump’s false claims about the threat of voter fraud.
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