BATON ROUGE — 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 to 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 after receiving a notification.
Louisiana election officials have already 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 in the first place.
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 strong record on election integrity under Secretary of State Nancy Landry as a reason it was 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 expressed concern about disenfranchising voters. Rep. Candace Newell, D-New Orleans, raised concerns about the notification process for those being investigated and said the safeguards protecting legal voters from unnecessary removal were insufficient.
"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.
She said election timelines may not allow for newly naturalized citizens' information to be updated prior to election deadlines, leaving eligible voters unable to cast ballots and creating risk of 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 whether the bill's requirement to share personal information violated citizens' constitutional rights. 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 Department of Homeland Security's database is tied to immigration records, and Newell said expanding its use could create a chilling effect on voter participation, particularly in immigrant communities.
"When it fails, it's not the system that suffers – it's our voters," Newell said. "HB 691 overestimates the problem, it underestimates the burden, and it's undermining confidence in our election system rather than continually strengthening our election integrity here in Louisiana."
The Louisiana bill comes amid President Donald Trump's push to change voting laws before the midterm elections. Trump is pressuring Congress to pass a federal voting bill that would require people to present additional identification, such as a passport or birth certificate, when registering to vote. That bill has 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 in scope to Beaullieu's bill.
The executive order would require the Department of Homeland Security to create a "state citizenship list" based on data from various federal databases, including citizenship and naturalization records and Social Security records. Under the order, federal officials would have to send the list to state election officials and ensure that the U.S. attorney general prioritizes prosecution of election officials who provide federal ballots to ineligible voters. Election officials in some states have said they view the order as unconstitutional and plan to challenge it in court.
