Louisiana's top election official has crafted a voting plan that only takes into account the COVID-19 pandemic to allow voters who test positive for the virus to receive absentee ballots. Republican Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin’s election plan discontinues most of the state's coronavirus exemptions, according to The Daily Advertiser. "The reality is the Legislature is majority Republican and I had to craft a plan that could get passed pragmatically and at the same time address the needs I saw," Ardoin told USA Today Network. "A good number of the Republicans who voted for the last plan said they couldn't do so again because the circumstances have changed.
“We were going from a stay-at-home order then to Phase 2 now and that made a big difference. I negotiated the best plan I could."
An earlier version of the plan allowed voters to qualify for an absentee ballot under the "hospitalization" exemption if there was an isolation order in place, the voter was high risk or taking care of those who were, or the voter had coronavirus symptoms or was self-quarantining, The Daily Advertiser reported.
The new plan, which has to pass House and Senate committees, reportedly scraps most of those exemptions. "I was in communication with the governor as late as Sunday," Ardoin told the newspaper. "His position is different, but I don't want to speak for him."
Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards’ office told The Advocate he is still reviewing the plan, but he was supportive of the summer emergency plan. "It would be my hope and expectation that the plan the secretary of state proffers to me and to the Legislature would look substantially similar to the one we just executed," Edwards said.
Louisiana is one of only seven states that require an excuse before allowing voters to vote by mail, The New York Times reported. The others are Indiana, Mississippi, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. Nine states mail ballots directly to voters, and 34 states allow absentee voting for all.
“It’s sort of trite to say that you’re going to have the highest turnout rate of your lifetime or this is the most important election of your lifetime, but it really feels like that,” University of Florida professor Michael McDonald told The New York Times. “I’m still expecting this to have very high turnout in November. The outstanding question that we have is just: Will the election system be able to bear that?”
