Secretary of State says $100 million needed for new voting machines

• Louisiana needs an additional $25 million to replace its aging voting machines, bringing the total cost to $100 million.
• The new system will feature touchscreen machines that produce a voter-verifiable paper ballot.
• An investigation found 403 non-citizens were registered to vote, with 83 having cast a ballot in at least one election.
• Officials say the state’s current 35-year-old machines are obsolete and replacement parts are no longer manufactured.

BATON ROUGE — Secretary of State Nancy Landry said this week that $25 million more is needed to cover the $100 million cost of replacing Louisiana’s 35-year-old ballot machines.

The system would consist of new touchscreen voting machines that print paper ballots and have climate-controlled facilities for storage. Additional expenses would maintain cybersecurity protections and allow for risk-limiting audits, which are considered the top standard for voter integrity.

“Louisiana voters have consistently indicated that they want a system that combines the speed of modern technology with the security of a voter-verifiable paper ballot, as required by state law,” Landry told the Senate Finance Committee on Monday.

The paper ballots will allow voters to verify their choices before casting.

Landry also told the committee that her agency’s investigators had identified 403 non-citizens who were registered to vote in Louisiana. Eighty-three of them had voted in at least one election, she said.

President Donald Trump and other Republican leaders have claimed that large numbers of unauthorized immigrants are voting in American elections. The Louisiana Legislature passed a bill in 2024 requiring proof of citizenship in registering to vote.

But the 403 non-citizens, who have all been removed from voter rolls, amounted to a miniscule percentage of the 2.9 million registered voters in the state.

The new voting system will slowly phase out the older machines before completely taking over.

Six certified vendors are being considered for new machinery. No vendor has been selected, but the secretary of state’s hope is to have one before the end of the year.

She said manufacturers no longer make replacement parts for the current machines. Parts are often cannibalized from other machines.  

“Simply put, the system has reached the end of its life cycle,” she said.

Even with old machines, Louisiana ranks fourth in the nation for voter integrity only behind Arkansas and Tennessee, which are tied for first, and Alabama, according to The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.

“When I took office, I pledged to make Louisiana #1 in election integrity,” Nancy Landry said. “At that time, Louisiana was ranked ninth.”