One day after the NoLaToya recall campaign and the Secretary of State's Office reached an agreement to lower the threshold of signatures needed to trigger a recall election against Mayor LaToya Cantrell, we're learning more about why that settlement came about.
Both parties agree: problems in the Registrar of Voters led to the agreement.
Recall vice-chair Eileen Carter told WWL's Newell Normand that the first sign there were issues in the Orleans Parish Registrar of Voters Office appeared when she called to find out their hours of operations in the days before and after the Mardi Gras holiday. Carter said officials in the office did not provide her an answer, adding that they could not provide her with legal information.
"I'm just asking what days you're open or closed," Carter said. "I could not get that information, and from that point, I was like, clearly we're going to have a contentious relationship."
Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin told Normand that his office got involved after the NoLaToya Campaign provided what he says was credible evidence that voters who should have dropped from the parish's rolls were still listed on those documents. Ardoin says Mayor Cantrell's allegations that his office is purging voters from the rolls are unfounded.
"The accusations yesterday about disenfranchisement, about purging: none of that is true. None of that is real," Ardoin said. "No one is being removed from the rolls. No one is being moved from active to inactive."
Ardoin says although no voters have been moved from active to inactive, he notes that compromise lowered the overall number of voters in Orleans Parish by around 50,000. Ardoin says his office has not yet been able "to go through" the data provided by the recall campaign. However, he say his office is now conducting a "deep dive" to find out exactly how many active voters are living in Orleans Parish.
"We'll issue a report to the Registrar of Voters, we'll issue a report to the legislature, and we'll issue a report to the city council so we're in full transparency and the voters understand what we're doing in this process," Ardoin said, adding that the certification process for the recall continues in the meantime.
Ardoin says Mayor Cantrell is playing politics with the situation. He says he can't do the same because the democratic process must move forward.
"I think the people of Orleans Parish needed a fair process, and I think we've come up with that," Ardoin said.
Carter says the inaccurate voter rolls impact more than just the recall effort. She says they are costing elected officials and candidates for office more time and money than they need to spend.
"Everyone who's run a campaign or everyone who's in that industry, you're literally paying those costs," Carter said. "Think about it. Every time you have to send something out--your emails, your MMS, your canvassing, your phone banking, all of that--you're files are wrong. That's extra time and money."
