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During her first statewide campaign last year, Secretary of State Nancy Landry was sometimes asked if she was related to the gubernatorial frontrunner, or if she was the candidate named Landry running for governor.
While it’s possible she has some relation to Gov. Jeff Landry—they’re both Landrys from southwest Louisiana, after all—it’s a distant connection, if any.
”We didn’t grow up as cousins or anything,” says the secretary of state.
Approaching the first half-year of her inaugural term, the Landry who oversees Louisiana’s elections keeps a schedule like she has already been on the job for much longer.
The recent regular session was a long grind, but Secretary Landry managed to go 11-for-11 with her legislative package. And with a presidential ballot coming into focus, she and her staff won’t have the luxury of halting the grind.
The office did get a bit of a reprieve recently when the U.S. Supreme Court settled—for this year, at least—the legal drama over our congressional map in time for the secretary’s May 15 deadline. That means notices about district changes can finally be sent to voters.
“Since they respected our deadline, it’s not a huge concern,” Secretary Landry says of the map change. “It would have been if they had violated the deadline that we gave them.”
Presidential elections always have the highest turnout, and this year’s Joe Biden-Donald Trump rematch is likely to be just as highly charged as last go-around. She knows there will be questions no matter who wins; she just hopes the public will trust her office to provide accurate information.
(In case you’re wondering, Landry’s position as the state’s elections chief precludes her from publicly supporting Trump or any other candidate.)
The conspiracy theories of Trump supporters that bedeviled Landry’s predecessor continue to make life more difficult for her office. For instance, falling short of passage during the regular session was House Bill 856, which would have removed some of the so-called bureaucratic red tape slowing down the replacement of Louisiana’s antiquated voting system.
The secretary said these bureaucratic hurdles, implemented in 2021, added about two years to the procurement process for a new system. As such, Landry says her office will revisit the conversation next year to see “if there are some things we can roll back, so that we’re treated like any other state agency in the procurement process.”
She adds, “Two years is too long to add to an already long process.”
Setting aside election system concerns, Landry’s office had a notable session, with all 11 bills in the SOS legislative package achieving final passage. She says the bills, covering everything from ballot harvesting and ranked-choice voting to new oversight and canvassing, were spurred by “anecdotal evidence we heard” or “investigations that we had.”
“We wanted to make sure that we would be able to pursue people who are doing these things and charge them with election violations,”
Landry says.
Her 2024 legislative package, as adopted by the Legislature, included the following:
—HB114 by Rep. Les Farnum: Enacts an expanded voter canvass.
—HB285 by Rep. Mark Wright: Creates the Division of Election Integrity within the Department of State.
—HB449 by Rep. Michael Melerine: Requires court judgments of interdiction be delivered to the Registrar of Voters in the parish in which the interdicted individual is registered.
—HB476 by Rep. Josh Carlson: Cracks down on absentee “ballot harvesting.”
—HB506 by Rep. Polly Thomas: Requires that those conducting voter registration drives register with the Secretary of State’s office, which is meant to ensure that voter registrations are timely submitted and that voters’ personal information is protected.
—HB581 by Thomas: Provides for more specific penalties for those witnessing more than one absentee ballot of a nonfamily member; requires that those signing as a witness on an absentee ballot be at least 18 years of age; and requires the witness to provide their address.
—Senate Bill 101 by Sen. Blake Miguez: Bans ranked-choice voting in Louisiana elections.
—SB155 by Sen. Caleb Kleinpeter: Prohibits people from assisting with more than one absentee ballot except for immediate family members.
—SB218 by Kleinpeter: Restricts the unsolicited distribution of absentee ballot applications.
—SB226 by Sen. Heather Cloud: Creates uniform standards for tabulating absentee ballots.
—SB436 by Sen. Mike Fesi: Allows the secretary of state to require proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote. The office has broad authority to decide what proof is necessary.
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
