Several voter advocacy groups sent a formal letter to Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales and Attorney General Todd Rokita, opposing their recent move that questions the citizenship of more than half a million registered voters.

Morales and Rokita are asking the federal government for the citizenship status of 585,774 people – more than 10 percent of the state’s registered voters.

Organizations including Common Cause Indiana, the League of Women Voters of Indiana, the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, and the Indiana State Conference of the NAACP said there’s no basis for suspecting Indiana’s voter rolls are full of non-citizens.

And their letter to the state officials emphasized that trying to remove any voter from the rolls this close to the election explicitly violates federal law.

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In an updated statement Thursday, Morales said he wasn’t trying to remove anyone from the voter rolls.

The voter advocacy groups warned that they are prepared to take legal action if state officials try to illegally remove voters from the rolls or intimidate people who are allowed to cast a ballot.

Brandon is our Statehouse bureau chief. Contact him at bsmith@ipbs.org or follow him on Twitter at @brandonjsmith5.