[JURIST] The US Department of Justice Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the state of Missouri, alleging that contrary to federal law it had failed to take steps to remove the names of deceased and otherwise ineligible voters from its electoral rolls. The DOJ suit claims the biggest problem is in Reynolds County, a small county with the Ozarks foothills where the list of eligible voters was 151 percent of the 2004 census count for its voting age population. Some 29 counties in total are identified as having more registrants than voting age individuals. Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan [official website], a Democrat who took office in January 2005, says the problem was inherited from the previous Republican state administration, and that the state technically has no power to correct the rolls, which are under the jurisdiction of local counties. Insisting that the suit was "unnecessary, unjustified and unwise", she has nonetheless sent a letter to the Department outlining a plan to train local officials to better maintain their rolls [Carnahan statement] and will start tracking how well they do so. AP has more.