Kentucky has some of the nation's highest rates of residents who can't vote because of felony convictions — but a recent federal lawsuit is seeking to change that.

The same national civil rights group that got a judge to declare Florida's practices for restoring voting rights unconstitutional is targeting Kentucky's restoration procedures.

The suit, initially filed last year in U.S. District Court in Louisville by a single felon, was joined last week by the Fair Elections Center and the Kentucky Equal Justice Center. It was amended to add three more plaintiffs who argue Kentucky's procedures for restoring voting rights are arbitrary and unconstitutional.

"If people take responsibility for their mistakes and complete their sentences, they shouldn't have to beg the government to regain their right to vote as American citizens," said Stephon Harbin, a Louisville resident and plaintiff.

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In Kentucky, nearly one in 10 residents, and one in four African-Americans, are barred from voting because of felony convictions.

The suit echoes the Fair Election Center's arguments in a similar Florida lawsuit, which led a federal judge to declare the state's practices unconstitutional and ordered its criteria for restoring rights to be made clearer.

That was under appeal when Florida voters last fall approved a citizen-led ballot measure to automatically restore most felons’ ability to vote once sentences are complete. On Tuesday, the amendment went into action and more than 1 million Floridians gained back their right to vote.

Florida's move left Kentucky and Iowa as the only two states to permanently ban all felons from voting unless restored individually by the governor. Virginia law also permanently bars felons from voting, but governors have recently been restoring rights automatically.

The other plaintiffs in the Kentucky lawsuit are Bryan LaMar Comer, Roger Wayne Fox II and Deric Lostutter.

Lostutter, 31, a one-time computer hacker activist known as "KYAnonymous," was sentenced to two years in prison in 2017 for illegally accessing a computer and lying to the FBI connected to his involvement in publicizing a 2012 rape case in Steubenville, Ohio.

He was released in May last year and filed a suit late last year when he discovered how many like himself were barred from voting in Kentucky, he said. He is still completing probation and hasn't applied for restoration, he said.

"All nonviolent felony offenders should have the right to vote," he said.

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Jon Sherman, senior counsel at Fair Elections Center, said Kentucky's restoration process requires felons with completed sentences to submit an application that is decided by the governor, "who has unconstrained power to grant or deny restoration with no rules, laws or criteria governing these determinations."

That means felons are subjected to arbitrary decision-making and the risk of biased treatment, violating the First Amendment, Sherman said. The lawsuit asks the court to order the state to establish a nonarbitrary system for rights restoration.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin is named in the suit.

"This lawsuit seeks to weaponize the U.S. Constitution to enable federal courts to upend the state constitutional process that Kentucky has followed for more than a century in restoring felons’ right to vote," Bevin's spokeswoman Elizabeth Kuhn said in a statement.

She said Bevin "is committed to the state constitutional process and has restored the right to vote to more than a thousand felons since taking office. The Governor intends to immediately seek dismissal of this lawsuit and to continue restoring felons’ right to vote through the process established in Kentucky’s Constitution."

Sherman said he hoped it would push state leaders to take further action. Bevin could more broadly grant restorations, which vary by governor. But to permanently change Kentucky's felon voter laws, the General Assembly must vote to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot.

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, however, has called voting a privilege that should be denied to felons. His office recently referred to comments from a 2002 congressional debate, when he said, "Those who break our laws should not have a voice in electing those who make and enforce our laws."

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In November 2015, outgoing Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear issued an executive order to automatically restore voting rights to people with nonviolent felony convictions who had completed their sentences, affecting more than 100,000 people.

But that order was reversed after Bevin's election. He argued it should be done by constitutional amendment. Since 2016, the governor's office had approved 975 of the 1,861 restorations of civil rights applications as of fall 2018, according to the Kentucky Department of Corrections. About 78 percent have completed their sentences.

There were more than 312,000 Kentuckians disenfranchised because of a felony in 2016, including 68,771 African-Americans, according to the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group that studies incarceration and criminal justice racial disparities.

"With Florida adopting a nonarbitrary voting rights restoration system, Kentucky is fighting an increasingly lonely battle to preserve a 19th century system that forces American citizens to plead for restoration of their voting rights," Sherman said.

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Reporter Chris Kenning can be reached at ckenning@gannett.com or 502-396-3361.