By MARK MORRIS

The Kansas City Star

Federal lawyers have asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit they filed against Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan alleging that she hadn’t properly managed state voter rolls.

The Justice Department contended in 2005 that Missouri voter registration officials had failed to purge ineligible voters from the rolls and pointed to counties that had more registrations than eligible voters.

Carnahan applauded the department’s decision to dismiss the suit, which she described as “unnecessary, unwise and costly.”

“The decision to drop this suit is long overdue,” Carnahan said “A prior ruling found my office not only complied with federal law but also went beyond its requirements through our many efforts to assist county clerks and election boards with their responsibilities.”

In 2007, the case became embroiled in the issue of whether the Bush administration had politicized the Justice Department by seeking to force states to remove Democratic-leaning voters from the rolls.

By then a federal judge in Kansas City had ruled that state officials had made a reasonable effort to comply with the National Voter Registration Act and were not responsible for how county election boards maintained voter rolls.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed last summer, saying lack of local compliance was relevant in determining whether the state had met its obligations under the so-called “motor-voter” law.

The case returned to federal court, where the judge in October declined to re-open discovery, the legal process that would have allowed the federal government to seek more current evidence from the state.

With that, federal lawyers determined that the case had grown stale.

“Discovery in this action closed more than two-and-a-half years ago, and the evidence in the record at that time may have limited applicability to current conditions in Missouri,” they wrote in a motion to dismiss.