Since Secretary of State Nancy Landry took office following her 2023 election, a systematic dismantling of mail-in ballot safeguards has been quietly codified into law. If this trend continues, Louisiana could soon mirror states like California, where loose mail-in voting regulations open the door to massive vulnerabilities and days of post-election counting.

To understand the threat, one must understand how a mail-in ballot works. The ballot itself does not contain the voter’s name; once it is removed from the envelope, it is anonymous. Therefore, any fraud must be caught at the envelope verification stage. If a fraudulent envelope passes inspection, the illegal vote inside is counted, and the damage cannot be undone.

Yet, a look at the legislative track record since 2024 reveals a disturbing pattern of watering down these exact verifications.

HB 581 (Act 712) by Polly Thomas: This bill ostensibly added a requirement for a witness’s mailing address to be included on the ballot envelope. Common sense, right? Except a loophole was quietly amended into R.S. 18:1315(B), stating: "Failure to include a witness’s mailing address on an absentee ballot certificate shall not be grounds to challenge an absentee by mail ballot.” The bill created a security requirement and immediately declared that violating it carries zero consequences. Why?

SB 226 (Act 321) by Heather Cloud: This was designed to automatically challenge ballots missing required information. However, another crucial carve-out was added to 18:1315(C): "However, an absentee by mail ballot shall not be deemed challenged solely because the voter indicates on the absentee by mail certificate that he does not know his mother’s maiden name.” By eliminating the requirement for this vital piece of identifying information, a primary layer of fraud prevention was neutralized. Why?

In 2025, Rep. Beau Beaullieu carried the Secretary of State’s Omnibus Election Bill, HB 592 (Act 386). Buried inside the 45-page document were significant changes to Louisiana law regarding eligibility to register to vote.

Prior to HB 592, the law relied heavily on the United States Postal Service (USPS) for address data verification during the annual canvass. The new law introduced language allowing the Secretary of State to enter into agreements with private vendors for voter registration eligibility and address data.

Because the new law uses flexible "and/or” language, the state is no longer strictly bound to federal or state agency verifications. Instead, a third-party private vendor could potentially become the sole gatekeeper of voter roll accuracy—raising serious questions about accountability, data privacy, and the potential for outsourced corruption.

2026: The Midnight Raid on the "Printed Name” Requirement

HB 842 by Rep. Beaullieu in 2026 perhaps best highlights the lengths to which some lawmakers will go to pass these changes. The bill provided that a witness’s failure to provide a printed name or address should not be considered a deficiency requiring a cure.

If a witness’s printed name is optional, the only remaining safeguards are the voter and witness signatures—both of which can easily be forged or scribbled, as signature matching is not routinely or rigorously enforced. There is simply nothing that stops a bad actor from posing, by way of forged signatures, as both the voter and the witness on a mail-in ballot. This should alarm every voter in Louisiana.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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