Legislation requiring the Louisiana Legislative Auditor to review local, state, and federal elections has received final legislative passage. Evangeline Parish Senator Heather Cloud said her legislation will help bring election integrity.
“Why wouldn’t we want another agency to come in and say yes they’re good or, just like a doctor does, we went through and identified the problems and there are some risks here and there’s some shortfalls here,” Cloud said.
Cloud says the legislative auditor already reviews numerous other state agencies and departments on how they operate and where they can improve. She says our elections should also undergo an independent review.
“Just seeing if the outcomes are kosher, but looking at the uniformity of rule between parishes,” Cloud said.
Cloud said it was over 20 years ago when there was an in-depth examination of elections. It resulted in the arrest and conviction of former elections commissioner Jerry Fowler who was involved in a kickback scheme in the selling of voting machines.
“Since then the books have basically been closed on any process and risk-based auditing so I’m just saying yeah we trust but we varify,” Cloud said.
The bill also allows parish registrars of voters to keep and maintain all records relating to absentees by mail and early voting 2 years following the election.
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