FRANKFORT, Ky — Kentucky sent out more than 3 million postcards ahead of the primary election informing voters how to vote absentee and received hundreds of thousands of those postcards back.

Kentucky is under a federal consent decree to clean up the voter rolls, and the returned postcards could play an important role in helping the Kentucky State Board of Elections identify some names that could be removed from the rolls. 

“What [the State Board of Elections] are going to do over the next month is data process all those returned cards and then I’m going to send a letter personally to every single one of those addresses with a request for that voter to come off the rolls,” Secretary of State Michael Adams (R) said. 

Adams says through this process, tens of thousands of deceased people have been removed from the rolls. 

“It’s appropriate to take people off our rolls who don’t live here anymore, it’s appropriate to take off our rolls who are dead. It’s just common sense there is nothing ideological about it,” he said. 

Adams insists he is not purging people from the rolls. 

“I’m not going to purge anybody, that means you take someone off without their consent, but I am going to vigorously use my authority to take people off the rolls that agree they shouldn't be on our rolls anymore because they don’t live here,” he said. 

Adams estimates they could remove tens of thousands of people from the voter rolls this year. 

Attention to Kentucky’s voter rolls has been around for some time and was an issue that Adams ran on, but he insists he will remove people the legal way. 

The State Board of Elections made headlines with they placed 175,000 voters on an inactive list ahead of the 2019 general election in an attempt to begin the process of cleaning up the rolls. Those placed on the list would still have been able to vote but would have to provide proof of their address, but the Kentucky Democratic Party sued over the list which resulted in a judge ordering the board to do away with the list.