NEW ORLEANS — The hearing involving the effort to recall Mayor Latoya Cantrell entered its second day. Organizers accused the state of not updating the list of active voters in the city, but a deal could be in the works.
There are concerns of a possible deal between the NOLATOYA.org campaign and the secretary of state’s office. Now, Louisiana has a reputation for voter shenanigans and that has some voters concerned about what this could mean going forward.
There’s a possible deal in the works that would set the number of signatures needed to force a recall vote, according to our partners at NOLA.com.
Dr. Ed Chervenak from the University of New Orleans says it’s very difficult to say what this deal would look like.
“We’re in uncharted waters right now, this has never really happened before. We don’t know what benchmarks they would set or criteria they would establish to determine whether people would be removed from active status to inactive status,” Chervenak said.
“We know going in that about 20% of the numbers that we call are non-working numbers.”
He says the agreement is about determining the correct number of active, registered voters in the parish.
“We know that the list is not perfect, now the question is what’s the scale or the scope of the people who have moved or who have passed on,” Chervenak said.
Remember, inactive voters can still vote, they just have to prove their address. Dr. Chervenak doubts this deal will affect the governor’s race.
“They’re not asking for voters to be purged, they’re asking for their status to be changed from active to inactive.”
That simple change is critical, as it would impact the number of signatures the recall campaign needs. Meanwhile, voters are unsure about what this will look like in the long run.
Tulane professor Rosalind Blanco Cook and a voter herself said that “there’s just a vast amount of names on the list that’s there’s no one there anymore, people say they haven’t lived there in years, you go to buildings that are no longer there. So that Is a concern.”
To reiterate, this is not a purge, the voting rolls will remain intact, to check you’re voter status, you can download the Go Geaux voter app.
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