People enter a voting precinct to vote in the Michigan primary election at Trombly School Aug. 7, 2018 in Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan. The attorney general’s office filed an opposition to a preliminary injunction. (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
The Alabama attorney general’s office filed a request Wednesday that a court not issue a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit over the state’s efforts to remove some voters from the voter roll.
In the 32-page filing, the state wrote that the plaintiffs challenging the removal misunderstood Secretary of State Wes Allen’s August news release to read it as proposing a systematic and untimely voter purge that targets naturalized citizens.
“They were just wrong about the nature of the process, which they said would ‘immediately inactivate … and remove’ thousands of naturalized citizens,” they wrote. “…There’s a world of difference between that accusation and the reality hidden by the ellipsis: Secretary Allen instructed registrars to ‘inactivate and initiate steps necessary to remove all individuals who are not United States Citizens.”