Questions remain about new election laws that take effect this week • Louisiana Illuminator

A slate of new Louisiana election laws set to take effect Thursday could disenfranchise voters and be used to levy unfounded allegations of fraud, voter advocacy groups say.

Earlier this year the state’s GOP-dominated Legislature passed several laws at the behest of new Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry, who is also a Republican. Bill authorities invoked the Republican catch phrase “strengthening election integrity,” though authorities have never found evidence of widespread voter fraud in Louisiana or elsewhere in the United States.

The laws have opened the door for state officials to enact stricter guidelines for third-party groups to hold voter registration drives and stricter requirements for voters to prove citizenship. They also could make it easier for authorities to criminalize certain acts as voter fraud. But there are also some unknowns about the new laws that have advocates anxious with only about three months left before the November elections.

This November, Louisiana voters will get to decide on the presidential election, six congressional seats, a state Supreme Court judgeship, and a constitutional amendment related to the use of energy revenues. 

Among the new election laws taking effect is House Bill 506, sponsored by Rep. Polly Thomas, R-Metairie. It will require any non-governmental groups to first sign up with the Louisiana Secretary of State before holding any voter registration drives. 

Former mayor of New Orleans and current Urban League President Marc Morial said he thinks most of Landry’s legislative agenda will only make it harder to vote or decrease voter turnout.

“I think you should have penalties for people who commit fraud … [but] it shouldn’t be hard to register people to vote,” Morial said in a phone interview. “ … It sounds like some kind of Soviet-era control.”

While many voter advocacy groups have criticized Thomas’ bill as a voter suppression tactic, Landry cited an incident of lost registration forms as the impetus for the legislation while testifying at a March 21 House and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing.

During last year’s election, an organization failed to turn in several dozen voter registration forms that high school students had filled out. The students later showed up to vote and were told they had never been registered. Landry’s office investigated the issue and learned what happened. A volunteer from the group that held the registration drive had left the forms in the trunk of someone’s car and forgot to turn them in, she said.

Landry said Thomas’ bill will allow election officials to keep track of voter registration drives and contact volunteers to make sure they fill out forms correctly and turn them in. 

However, several unanswered questions remain about what all will be required of the groups: What information will be required from them? Will they be required to sign up with the Secretary of State in person? How long will their registration be valid? Does every member of a group need to register? 

“That’s actually the biggest problem,” Peter Robins-Brown, executive director of Louisiana Progress, said. “It’s that a lot of those laws were very vague … They should have had those answers laid out before they introduced the bill.”

Landry’s spokesman Joel Watson said the office will be releasing guidance that should answer many of those questions before the law takes effect Thursday. 

“This law is not about individuals or groups receiving clearance from our office or the [registrars of voters] but registering their drive so that they can be contacted when needed,” Watson said.

The Urban League held its national conference in New Orleans last week and included courses on voter registration training. The organization publishes state-specific guides on voter registration laws and could have to make changes to Louisiana’s guide after Thursday. 

Robins-Brown said he is also concerned about what the penalties might be for those who violate the law by failing to register. He said he is most concerned for small neighborhood associations and individuals involved in loosely organized civic engagement activities that include helping their neighbors get registered to vote. 

“You just can’t expect the average person to know all of these rules or at least know them in detail,” Robins-Brown said. “At what point does my attempt to register my neighbors go from an act of civic engagement to a violation or a crime of voter fraud?”

Thomas’ bill did not establish criminal penalties, though lawmakers passed a separate measure that does criminalize other acts. 

Senate Bill 420, sponsored by Sen. Valarie Hodges, R-Denham Springs, expands the state crime of election fraud with several new provisions to encompass a wider variety of acts. The crime carries a penalty of up to two years in prison.

Most of the new provisions align with typical voter fraud crimes such as forging a ballot or attempting to vote more than once. Others, however, are more vague, including a provision that apparently makes it a crime to forge, alter, take or destroy “election supplies.”  

Another provision makes it a crime to possess an official ballot in violation of any provision of the Louisiana Election Code. 

House Bill 476, sponsored by Rep. Josh Carlson, R-Lafayette, prohibits a person from mailing more than one absentee ballot for a voter who isn’t an immediate family member. Similarly, Senate Bill 218, sponsored by Sen. Caleb Kleinpeter, R-Port Allen, prohibits the same act with regard to mailing the application form for an absentee ballot for more than one voter who isn’t an immediate family member. It also makes it a crime to give an absentee ballot application form to two or more people who are not immediate family members. 

Landry, while testifying in support of Kleinpeter’s bill in March, said allowing unknown individuals to collect unlimited numbers of ballot applications would give them access to the voter’s name and address and therefore allow them to “harass and intimidate voters” into voting a certain way. 

The secretary of state’s office has cited three incidents as evidence of election fraud, though none revealed evidence of widespread wrongdoing among voters. Two of the incidents involved a vote-buying scheme by politicians from the same small town — Amite City. 

The third occurred in a 2018 local election in Acadia Parish, where a woman assisting two elderly voters allegedly failed to mark their absentee ballots as directed. The Crowley woman was convicted on a single misdemeanor charge and received two years probation. Authorities never disclosed how she marked the ballots.

None of the incidents affected the outcome of the respective elections.