La. Legislature approves emergency election plan
4th May 2020 · 0 Comments
By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer
Louisiana legislators approved an emergency election plan on April 27 despite opposition from members of both parties.
The House approved the plan via mail in a 62 to 39 vote and the Senate approved it by mail in a 31 to 8 vote. The plan expands access to mail-in ballots to people at risk from serious medical conditions (e.g. COVID-19 comorbidities like diabetes and hypertension), those who are under a medically necessary quarantine or isolation order, those with symptoms of COVID-19, and those caring for someone subject to a quarantine order.
Following the passage of the plan, Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin issued a statement: “This is a great result for Louisiana’s voters and election workers, especially those most susceptible to the COVID-19 virus…Our plan serves as a temporary and pragmatic response to the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging our nation.”
Ardoin will have the power to change precinct locations, relocate polling places, expand in-person early voting from seven days to thirteen days and increase the availability of mail-in absentee ballots.
State Representative Jason Hughes, a Democrat from District 100, voted no on the plan. He issued a statement that said, “…the Louisiana Legislature was presented with a revised plan which removed many of the protections for our citizens that will force them to choose between their health and safety or their right to vote…I simply could not accept that a weak plan is better than no plan, especially when such a plan leaves thousands of residents in my district at-risk, including many senior citizens. Additionally, I could not ignore the fact that roughly 70 percent of COVID-19 related deaths in Louisiana have been African-American residents yet this plan fails to according to the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office. Turnout in presidential elections in Louisiana has stayed higher, at 55 percent to 60 percent of eligible voters, though voting-rights advocates fear it could slip this year if voters do not feel safe.
Voting by mail is “something we’ve thought was important for a while now, but with the current state of the world, we now believe it is not only important, but essential to the democratic process,” Catherine McKinney, the director of the Louisiana Vote-by-Mail initiative, said.
“Now it is not only easier but imperative to keeping our poll workers and our voters safe from a global pandemic,” she said.
Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, a Republican, and Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, had agreed on an emergency election plan that would have made mail-in absentee ballots available in the presidential primary to anyone affected by the coronavirus or who did not want to vote in person for fear of catching it.
Sen. Barry Milligan, R-Shreveport, helped shoot down that plan at a hearing on April 15, saying it was “extremely broad and basically covers everyone in Louisiana.”
“There is not an election cycle that goes through that we wake up to the news that votes are found in somebody’s garage or somebody’s truck,” Milligan said.
Milligan’s comments echoed concerns expressed by President Donald Trump, who claimed recently that “mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country, because they’re cheaters.”
He also maintained that if vote-by-mail were expanded, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
Numerous studies show, however, that mail-ballot fraud is very rare. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan institute in New York, none of the states that hold their elections by mail have had any voter fraud scandals. In fact, the most significant recent instance of voter fraud was committed by a Republican operative in North Carolina, who illegally collected and filled in absentee ballots.
Colorado, Oregon and Washington were voting entirely by mail long before the COVID-19 outbreak.
Colorado implemented mail-in ballots in 2013. Its voter turnout rate was 51.7 percent in 2010, but in its 2018 gubernatorial election, nearly 62 percent of eligible voters mailed in ballots.
Voter turnout in Washington is typically around 70 percent of registered voters with all-mail voting. At least 60 percent of people in Washington chose the option to vote by mail before the state switched to sending mail-in ballots to all registered voters.
Even though it was at the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, Washington had a 50 percent turnout rate for its presidential primary in March, thanks to its focus on mail voting. Louisiana’s voter turnout in the 2016 presidential primary was only 28 percent of registered voters.
Before the pandemic, Louisiana was one of only 16 states that required voters to submit a valid excuse to obtain an absentee. In the 2016 general election, only 1.8 percent of Louisiana’s registered voters cast absentee ballots.
Ardoin and legislators from both parties say they want to avoid a situation like Wisconsin just went through in its presidential primary on April 7.
Republican leaders there rejected proposals to loosen restrictions on voting because of the virus, and they were backed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Long lines ensued, and 52 Wisconsin voters and poll workers have since been diagnosed with COVID-19, though it is unclear where their exposures occurred.
Given the health risks, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo canceled the state’s Democratic primary altogether. Ohio, a key swing state, was one of the first states to move forward with a last-minute plan to vote by mail. Results of that change were mixed in its primary on April 28, with many citizens failing to receive an absentee ballot in time to cast their vote.
Besides vote-by-mail, some states have implemented other alternative voting methods—either before the COVID-19 outbreak or since—to make voting more accessible and increase turnout.
These include same-day registration, in which people can register online or at the polls on election days, and holidays from work for voting. Georgia and Colorado, both states with average turnout rates over 50 percent, have holidays on election days, while Louisiana does not.
Early, in-person voting has expanded in Louisiana, with 33 percent of those who cast ballots in the 2019 gubernatorial election voting early.
But “if you want to vote early, you have to go to a central location,” said Dr. Brian Brox, a Tulane University professor specializing in. Other states have implemented early voting that actually incorporates satellite early voting, where they basically have more places in the county, rather than having to go to the courthouse.”
Virginia and Maryland are among the states that have lifted restrictions on voting since the COVID-19 outbreak. Virginia removed its excuse requirement for absentee ballots, loosened voter identification laws and expanded its early-voting period. It also made election day a holiday.
Brox contends that lawmakers in Louisiana have not been interested in removing more of the barriers because the voters who manage to overcome them are the ones who put them in office.
“There needs to be a way to kind of get around the gatekeepers, who are basically the legislators,” he said.
Lawmakers, of course, disagree. “I’m not going to spend the thousand hours of effort to come up with good solutions to these problems,” Rep. Barry Ivey, R-Central, said in an interview on this subject last year. “I do not feel that as a state our voting opportunities in the aggregate are subpar. I believe we’re probably above average in that category.”
But in the congressional election in November 2018, Louisiana ranked 45 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia in the percentage of voters who turned out, according to data compiled by Dr. Michael McDonald at the University of Florida.
Republican strategists fear that expanding the use of mail ballots would increase voter turnout among poorer people who would not vote for them. But greater use of mail ballots also could help Republicans, especially if Louisiana gets a second wave of COVID-19 in the fall and older voters are reluctant to go to the polls.
If the virus ramps up again then, McKinney said, “Under no circumstances should the state of Louisiana put our poll workers or our voters in harm’s way when such a simple solution is available like vote-by-mail.”
This article originally published in the May 4, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
