Secretary of State Nancy Landry speaks about election security

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – Secretary of State Nancy Landry has been traveling around the state speaking with local election officials before the early voting process begins this week. She said she has been working to close loopholes and make this election as safe as possible.

“In Louisiana, we do elections right,” Landry said. “We are in the top 10 in the country when it comes to election integrity, and that is because of what I have called the four Ps of election integrity and our staff establishing policies or procedures for our physical security.”

Landry said voting machines are not connected to the internet and are managed solely by certified poll workers. “Our policies and procedures include testing our devices in a public gathering and sealing them with a tamper-evident seal,” Landry said. “So if the seal is in place and is tamper-proof, you can tell if someone has tried to tamper with it and it will also be reopened in a public meeting.”

National talking points about election security played a role in recent changes to the voting process. The Office of the Secretary now has access to the names of non-citizens of the state. Voting as a non-citizen has always been a crime, but Landry says she found 48 names who were registered to vote.

“So I don’t know whether they voted or not, and we’re still investigating that, but these were 48 people who shouldn’t have followed our voter rules and were removed,” Landry said.

Another point of discussion, absentee voting is now only available to people who qualify for 12 exceptions. One of them is 65 years old. When voting by mail, only one person is allowed to help cast the vote in order to limit ballot collection. Landry says this shouldn’t make voting more difficult.

“The voter clerk goes to the nursing home and these are professional election administrators who are trained in waste to help people vote without influencing their vote,” Landry said.

After this election, Landry hopes for a completely new electoral system; The last modernization took place 30 years ago.

“Our machines are so old that they sometimes fall apart and we can’t get the parts for them anymore because they don’t make the parts anymore, so we need to get a new system in the next year or two urgently,” Landry said.

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