How Louisiana Measures Up on Election Integrity

On July 6, 2026, our friends at the EIN (Election Integrity Network) issued guidelines on what secure election laws should look like in all 50 states. If you want to pick up a copy, it’s available as an 118-page paperback or ebook on Amazon under the title Model Election Laws Handbook. Any reasonable person in Louisiana might expect a member of our state’s Voting Systems Commission to stay on top of these things. So, even though it’s an unpaid, volunteer position, I decided to dive in right away.

As is my occasional custom when donning this hat, I will also make the rounds with several election integrity enthusiasts, some of whom have scorecards. One such organization is the Heritage Foundation, whose Election Integrity Scorecard currently ranks Louisiana #4 in the nation.

By the way, whenever something like this catches my attention, I’m interested in seeing how we compare against the reforms that election-integrity advocates themselves say every state should adopt. After working through both evaluations, one conclusion became difficult to ignore. Louisiana already does far more than many people realize. In fact, while recommending reforms for the rest of the country, the Election Integrity Network’s book even cites Louisiana law as an example to be followed.

Much of the “model legislation” already exists here.

Reading through the Election Integrity Network’s recommendations became a recurring exercise in déjà vu.

• Require voter identification. Louisiana already does.
• Verify voter eligibility. Louisiana already does.
• Maintain statewide voter registration databases against death records, corrections records, DMV records, and interstate registration data. Once again, Louisiana already does all of this.
• Require witnesses or notaries for absentee ballots. Already done.
• Prohibit mass unsolicited mail ballots. Already done.
• Ban unattended ballot drop boxes. Already done.
• Reject barcodes or QR codes that cannot be verified by human review. Already done.
• Prohibit internet-connected voting equipment. Already done.
• Publish precinct results publicly. Already done (and I check them myself during every election).
• Require chain-of-custody procedures. Already done.

In many instances, Louisiana implemented these safeguards years before they appeared in model legislation like this.

The Heritage score tells a similar story.

Heritage awarded Louisiana an overall score of 85 out of 100, ranking fourth nationally. Most of the remaining deductions weren’t about ballot security itself, but about broader legal and constitutional questions. Some examples include:

• Eliminating an affidavit exception (Pinky Promise) for voters who appear without identification. This was addressed by Senator Thomas Pressly (R 7/10) as SB319 in the 2026 Regular Session;
• Implementing post-election manual audits, which will naturally accompany Louisiana’s transition to voter-verifiable paper ballots (VVPAT), including hand-marked paper ballots;
• Expanding data analysis of voter-registration records to identify unusual address patterns or other anomalies that warrant investigation (Readers may remember our investigation that identified 588 registered voters at a vacant New Orleans building.)
• Modifying litigation procedures to require legislative approval of any legal settlements that changed election laws. Michael Melerine (R 8/10) attempted to address this one in 2025 with HB206. The governor ultimately vetoed it, instead favoring Mike Johnson‘s (R 8/10) HB64, which vested all such legal powers in the state’s Attorney General.

While those are legitimate policy discussions, they aren’t evidence that Louisiana operates an insecure election system. Even so, Louisiana’s Secretary of State, Nancy Landry, continues to work with the legislature to improve these scores every single year.

The biggest remaining transition

The most significant modernization still underway is Louisiana’s transition to a voter-verifiable paper ballot system. Current direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines cannot support modern risk-limiting audits because there is no independently voter-verified paper record.

Moving away from DRE has been a surprisingly slow process. However, Louisiana is actively moving toward the next generation of auditable election systems. State law already requires that future voting systems produce a voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) and allow hand-marked paper ballots, a decision you can verify directly in the Voting System Commission’s official meeting minutes.

Once deployed statewide, Louisiana will be able to perform the same kinds of post-election audits now recommended by election security organizations across the country.

Transparency is stronger than many realize.

One of Louisiana’s greatest strengths rarely receives attention. Our election administration is remarkably transparent, and the underlying records are genuinely available for independent public inspection.

• Individual voter participation data is published daily during elections.
• Precinct results are published on election night and correspond to the vote counts posted on the doors of the various polling places.
• Ballots themselves become public records after elections and may be examined by the public.

Perhaps Louisiana’s least appreciated safeguard is that ballots are public records. If a candidate, researcher, journalist, or citizen wishes to inspect them, they may do so. In other words, Louisiana’s election system does not require blind trust. It allows independent verification. The reason I know about this provision is that I’ve done it myself. This is precisely how public confidence should work in every state — and we’re already doing it in Louisiana.

No system is perfect.

Every election system can be improved. Louisiana recently eliminated its affidavit (or pinky promise) exception, replacing it with a voter identification requirement. The future deployment of paper-ballot auditing will further strengthen confidence. Analyzing voter-registration data for anomalies may prove a worthwhile area for improvement. But after comparing Louisiana’s laws against hundreds of pages of election-security recommendations, one conclusion becomes difficult to avoid: Louisiana is already doing nearly all of it.

Much of what national organizations recommend as future reform has already been implemented here. Louisiana’s election system deserves regular scrutiny, as every election system does. But scrutiny begins with understanding what actually exists—not with assumptions imported from other states or recycled from national headlines. In fact, many of the reforms now being promoted nationally have quietly been part of Louisiana’s election laws and procedures for years. That’s something every Louisianan—regardless of political persuasion—should know.

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