Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin's proposed plan for the November 3rd Presidential election and December run-off scales-back eligibility for requesting an absentee ballot compared to the July and August elections. Ardoin says the plan has been tailored to work in Phase Two compared to the stay at home order.
“We need this plan for the logistics of pulling off a safe, secure, and accurate election. So I hope the politics will be put aside and we’ll utilize this plan in order to move forward,” said Ardoin.
The plan would also increase the state’s early voting period to ten days versus seven and add an extra hour and a half to each day.
The only COVID-related reason for requesting an absentee ballot would be testing positive for the virus during or after early voting but before election day. Ardoin says the observations in July indicate only a small portion of the participation was COVID absentee voters.
“The COVID absentee ballot only got 2% participation, so 82% percent of all voting was done in person and so I suspect that’ll still be the same in November,” said Ardoin.
Ardoin says the emergency plan still faces some hurdles as it has to be approved by lawmakers and receive the signature of the Governor.
“Whether it is the Governor, the Senate, or the House, if anyone of those three rejects it, then it’s dead and we’ll just conduct elections under our normal procedures as we used to do in the past,” said Ardoin.