Louisiana: Official vote to be tallied in race for New Orleans City Council at large seat | wwltv.com

Tuesday morning marks a critical climax in the race for the Orleans Parish City Council at large seat. The voting machines will be opened and the results will be verified. What can often be a lackluster affair took on special significance when Stacy Head won by less than 300 votes in the unofficial tally Saturday night, and Cynthia Willard-Lewis refused to concede. The Orleans Parish voting machines are stored at 8870 Chef Menteur Hwy. They have been locked up there since the election wrapped up Saturday night. That election caused jaws to drop in political circles, as Head won by just 281 votes out of the 55,000 that were cast.

Louisiana: Secretary of State’s website crashes during election | WVLA

Secretary of State Tom Schedler says he and his staff are looking into what crashed their website, which slowed results on election night. If you were paying attention to the races this past weekend, you probably noticed when the Secretary of State’s website shut down. Everyone, including the news media, couldn’t get the numbers they needed.

Schedler says it had to do with the amount of people accessing the website with smartphones. He says with people checking on the elections inside and outside the state, the website was bound to crash.

Louisiana: NAACP, Justice Dept. Sue State Over Voter Registration Issues | WDSU New Orleans

The state National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Department of Justice said Louisiana isn’t doing enough to register minority and low-income citizens. Both groups have sued the state in federal court.

“The allegation is that the Department of Health and Hospitals and Social Service personnel, the Department of Children and Families, did not offer on a routine basis, at least on the secret shopper interviews, the voter registration application,” said Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Shedler.

Louisiana: Secretary of state’s office unveils 110 new absentee vote counters | NOLA.com

Secretary of State Tom Schedler’s office began training parish election officials Monday on how to use new digitized absentee vote-counting machines that will be used for the first time in the Oct. 22 statewide elections. The state will be using new equipment to record absentee ballots in the Oct. 22 elections.

Commissioner of Elections Angie Rogers said the new machines will speed the process of counting absentee ballots by local officials on election night and will feed into the secretary of state’s system which also includes early voting and election day totals. Rogers said that the state bought 110 new scanners and updated its laptop computers  with $2.5 million in federal Help America Vote Act dollars. She  said no state money was used in the purchase.

Louisiana: Secretary of State vows to fight federal lawsuit | The News Star

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit earlier this month against Louisiana alleging the state has violated its obligations to the National Voter Registration Act by failing to provide voter registration services at various public assistance offices such as the food stamp offices and Medicaid offices.

The Justice Department filed the suit July 12. The complaint alleges that Louisiana officials have not routinely offered voter registration forms, assistance and services to the state’s eligible citizens who apply, recertify or provide a change of address for public assistance, disability services or benefits.

Secretary of State Tom Schedler said his office will fight the accusations, and he said he doesn’t want to just settle the suit for the sake of settling.

Louisiana: A Tale of Two Special Elections: Costing Out Louisiana and Massachusetts | Electionline Weekly

Hundreds of special elections are held across the nation each year and because there is no way officials can plan for them, budgeting can be difficult. Below is an analysis of how two states , Louisiana and Massachusetts handle special elections.

Louisiana

A recent report from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor‘s office calculated that special elections in the state, from 2005 to 2010, cost state and local governments more than $1 million with the direct costs of running these elections ranging between $12,000 and $137,000 a piece. As already reported, a potential conclusion from this report is that Louisiana is spending unnecessary resources to hold special elections rather than postponing these races until the next regularly scheduled election days.

Legislation to reduce the number of standalone local elections has already been introduced by the state Legislature, but underneath the headline of the cost of eac h election is the story of how states and localities divvy up the costs of running those elections.

Louisiana: Louisiana Violated Disabled Voter Rights, U.S. Says in Suit | Bloomberg

The state of Louisiana and some of its agencies and officials violated the National Voter Registration Act through their treatment of disabled residents and people on public assistance, the U.S. said in a lawsuit.

The U.S. Justice Department said in the suit filed today in federal court in Baton Rouge, Louisiana that the state broke the law by failing to provide voter registration services at offices administering to residents on public assistance or state-funded programs serving people with disabilities. The law requires states to “identify and designate” these offices as voter registration agencies, the U.S. said.