A House bill that would require the Louisiana secretary of state to submit details on every registered voter to a national database for investigation into their eligibility passed 73-29 Tuesday following extensive debate.
House Bill 691, by Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, would require the secretary of state to submit personal information of every registered voter in the federal database annually.
All potential noncitizens would be subject to an investigation by their parish’s division of election integrity to verify their status, which could result in cancellation of their registration. Voters would have 30 days to respond once they had been sent a notification.
Louisiana election officials already have used the federal technology to remove approximately 400 noncitizens from the state’s voting rolls.
The secretary of state submits every voter’s first and last name, home address and Social Security number for verification, and the federal Department of Homeland Security runs it through a database called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program.
No research has been conducted to determine how ineligible voters were able to register to vote. Beaullieu said his goal is to ensure that all future secretaries of state continue checking voter rolls through the federal database.
“Every illegal vote that is cast in our elections cancels out a legal vote,” Beaullieu said.
Many representatives spoke in opposition to the bill, citing Louisiana’s good standing in election integrity under Secretary of State Nancy Landry as a reason for it being unnecessary.
“I think we’re ranked fourth in the country for election integrity,” Beaullieu said. “I think it’s a lot of the work Secretary Landry is doing. This is going to be an opportunity to keep those rolls clean.”
Representatives opposing the bill were concerned about disenfranchising voters. Rep. Candace Newell, D-New Orleans, expressed concerns about the notification process for those being investigated and was dissatisfied with the safeguards protecting legal voters from being unnecessarily removed from voter rolls.
“If the mail was intentionally misdelivered or mishandled, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the U.S. Postal Service will not be liable and our citizens will have no recourse for their constitutional rights being mishandled,” Newell said.
Newell cited statistics from Texas, which has been using the federal database to verify its voters, indicating that 25% of naturalized citizens in certain counties were marked as ineligible to vote due to the Social Security Administration’s failure to update its database.
Newell said election timelines may not allow for newly naturalized citizens’ information to be updated prior to election deadlines, leaving eligible voters unable to vote and creating risk for violating voting rights protections.
Concerns about preventing eligible voters from participating were echoed by Rep. Wilford Carter Sr., D-Lake Charles.
“You’re going to have a lot of errors, a lot of mistakes,” Carter said. “As many as 10% of the people in Louisiana are not going to be able to vote.”
Rep. Edmond Jordan, D-Baton Rouge, questioned the integrity of the bill as it relates to the privacy of U.S. citizens, saying it might violate citizens’ constitutional rights by sharing their private information. He also cited Louisiana’s success in election integrity.
“I find it ironic that we would protect one right, and then, on the other hand, violate another,” Jordan said.
Beaullieu said the bill would “protect our election system, which is extremely important to the foundation of our democracy.”
“If that’s what it takes to protect it, go ahead and share my Social Security number,” Beaullieu said.
The Louisiana bill comes amid a push by President Donald Trump to change voting laws before the midterm elections. He is pressuring Congress to pass a federal voting bill that would require people to provide more identification, like passports or birth certificates, when registering to vote. The bill has been stalled in the U.S. Senate.
Trump has long claimed that voter fraud is rampant, though Louisiana and other states have found no evidence of that. The president also signed an executive order Tuesday similar to Beaullieu’s bill.
