Louisiana
Ballot Security
What Politicians Say
All of the state’s voting takes place on machines that are considered insecure.
According to the nonpartisan Verified Voting Foundation, all of Louisiana’s Election Day voting equipment is touch-screen machines that do not produce a paper record of the vote.
That can cause problems when aging touchscreens aren’t calibrated correctly, causing the machine to make the wrong selection. It also leaves the machines vulnerable to hacking which would not be detectable because there is no paper ballot.
Louisiana is one of only six states that still use the technology, and the only one in which all machines are touch-screens.
Several of those states are moving away from the technology. Indiana passed a law to add paper receipts to all voting machines by the 2024 election. A new law in Tennessee will add paper receipts by the end of 2024. Missouri is phasing them out as they wear out or break.
Republican Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, an advocate for switching to paper ballots, said the state likely won’t change its voting machines before the 2022 midterms and may not be able to before the 2024 election either.
Ease of Voting
New laws in 2021 expanded the amount of time that a voter can take to cast a ballot from three to six minutes and allowed children under 18 to accompany their parents in the voting booth.
Ballot Security
In 2021 and 2022, the legislature passed new laws requiring dead people be removed from voter rolls within 30 days of the receipt of a death certificate; adding training for local elections administrators; allowing local elections administrations to pre-process mail ballots, which can speed up vote counting; and requiring the legislature be involved in any emergency election plans.
How Politicians Responded to the 2020 Election
Attorney General Jeff Landry supported a Texas lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to intervene in the election.
US Senator John Kennedy objected to the certification of Biden electors from Arizona.
Three out of Louisiana’s four Republican US representatives objected to Arizona’s electors and all four objected to Pennsylvania’s. Four also signed an amicus brief in the Texas lawsuit.