“Madam chairwoman and members, I don’t think any of you would want to be sitting where I am.”
That’s how Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin kicked off his closing statement last week during an emergency election plan meeting of the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee, writes Jeremy Alford in his new opinion piece. The plan, politically controversial in every conceivable way, was approved the day prior by the House and Governmental Affairs Committee.
A few minutes later, Ardoin was suddenly in tears. He mentioned the amount of hate mail sent to him by those on both the left and the right due to his office’s proposed plan.
“The toll this has all taken has been tremendous,” Ardoin said. “I’m not shedding tears for me. I shed them for my state.”
The Senate committee ultimately advanced the plan, which curtails the earlier COVID-19 election guidelines for absentee and early voting. Democrats and Gov. John Bel Edwards want to expand those offerings, while Ardoin and most Republicans want to return to pre-coronavirus levels. The plan needs approval next from both chambers of the Legislature and the governor, who has already announced his intentions to reject the proposal.
That means the emergency election plan will likely be decided by a federal judge in a courtroom drama, which is fitting considering the still-smoldering path this issue has cut through the Legislature’s governmental affairs committees. Read Alford’s full column here.
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or on Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
