Louisiana’s top election official said she has discovered 390 non-citizen registered voters in the state, with 79 voting in at least one election over the past several decades.

The 390 suspected non-citizen voters represent approximately 0.01% of the roughly 2.9 million registered voters in Louisiana.

Secretary of State Nancy Landry, a Republican, said Thursday at a news conference she called that the results are the “preliminary findings” of an investigation her office launched in May after gaining access to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, which the Trump administration rolled out to state and local governments this year.

Landry said her investigators ran names from Louisiana’s voter rolls through the SAVE database and worked with the FBI to confirm their citizenship status. Investigators scoured state voting records going back to the 1980s, she said.

Landry declined to release further details about the suspects of the incidents of alleged fraud, saying her investigation remains ongoing.

In a later interview, Landry acknowledged the possibility that some of her findings could be attributed to errors or outdated information. Suspected non-citizen voters will be afforded due process to determine if they are innocent, she said.

While Landry said voter fraud is “not a systemic problem in Louisiana,” she noted that some local elections have been decided by just a handful of votes. She didn’t say if the newly discovered noncitizen voters impacted any of those elections.

It’s a crime under state and federal laws for noncitizens to vote or to submit false voter registration information. Landry said her office is working with local and federal authorities to determine if anyone implicated in her findings can be prosecuted.

The secretary of state’s investigators have not interviewed or spoken to any of the alleged suspects but have sent out letters notifying them of the findings, she said.

Sen. Caleb Kleinpeter, R-Port Allen, who chairs the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee, attended Landry’s news conference alongside his counterpart in the House, Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia. Kleinpeter authored recent changes for stricter state elections laws and said he was surprised that only 79 noncitizens have voted in Louisiana over so many years.

Kleinpeter said he thought the number would be higher, adding that even one unlawful vote is too many.

“Every illegal vote counts against a legal vote,” Kleinpeter said in an interview.

Gov. Landry targets ‘noncitizens’ in Louisiana, claiming immigrants pose voter fraud risk

One voting rights advocate questions why the secretary of state would go public with preliminary findings of an investigation before all the evidence has been collected.

Ashley Shelton, who leads the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, noted that state investigators haven’t spoken to any of the alleged suspects.

“Why do a press conference if you’re not really sure, or you don’t have undeniable evidence that the allegations are true?” Shelton said in a phone interview. “Of course everybody wants elections to have integrity, but there’s a reason why they had to go back to the 1980s to uncover the alleged 79 people.”

Shelton said bigger problems with election integrity stem from the way they are administered and failure to educate poll workers and voters when election rules are changed.

“Voting rights are under attack,” Shelton said. “We have so many elections we can’t even keep count, and there’s no willingness to streamline the process.”

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People are buying and selling table reservations at iconic New Orleans eateries for eye-popping amounts via third-party websites, often without the restaurant’s knowledge.

Critics want lawmakers to ban the burgeoning online business they consider a racket, arguing that it undermines the fine-dining experience and could potentially leave restaurants with empty tables. However, proponents of the practice say it benefits both diners and restaurants when done properly.

Some iconic restaurants topped the list during a recent scan of the New Orleans section of Appointment Trader, one of several platforms designed to let people with scheduling conflicts sell highly coveted reservations on the open market. A Saturday night reservation at Brennan’s later this month is available for a suggested bid of $235 — a discount compared to the whopping $2,138 someone paid for a four-top at Antoine’s during the Super Bowl weekend.

Are those prices based on genuine demand for seating at the restaurants, or is it artificially inflated by technology built to cash in on wealthy tourists desperate to dine in the city’s elite culinary corners?

That’s a question Louisiana lawmakers will try to answer in the coming months as they consider House Bill 90, sponsored by Rep. Troy Hebert, R-Lafayette. The legislation could ban companies such as Appointment Trader, Dorsia and Wuw Wuw from operating in Louisiana.

Specifically, Hebert’s bill prohibits third-party companies from offering or arranging reservations at any restaurants that have not agreed to the service through a contract.

Hebert could not be reached for comment, but the Louisiana Restaurant Association, a trade group that asked Hebert to file the legislation, said it is modeled after similar laws recently enacted in other states such as New York. They all describe the legislation as a measure to prevent “restaurant reservation fraud.”

Appointment Trader, founded in 2021, lets users buy and sell reservations and appointments of all kinds through auction-style bidding. Sellers can set their own asking prices, and bidders can make offers at any rate. Additionally, prospective buyers can use the platform as a concierge service, offering a fee to any user who can secure them a reservation at a particular establishment.

In its early days, the platform was limited mostly to hotspots such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Las Vegas. It has since gained popularity and expanded into smaller markets including New Orleans and virtually anywhere else one has a reservation they want to sell. As of Thursday, the platform had clocked over $6 million in trades within the last 12 months.

In a phone interview, Louisiana Restaurant Association spokeswoman Wendy Waren said platforms like Appointment Trader are selling reservations without the restaurants’ permission or knowledge. If no one buys the reservations, tables just sit empty, which can cause seating delays or prevent genuine customers from getting a reservation and actually bringing business to the restaurant, she said.

“It creates artificial scarcity,” Waren said. “It’s like somebody’s hijacking the process.”

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New York hospitality trade groups have accused the platforms of using software bots to snap up reservations and sell them on what they call a “black market.”

Appointment Trader founder Jonas Frey said he is just trying to solve a problem with a legitimate service that can benefit all parties, particularly the restaurants. The 37-year-old software engineer is a German immigrant who came to the U.S. five years ago and came up with the idea for his platform while waiting in a long line at his local motor vehicles office in Las Vegas. He now lives in Miami with his wife and is serious about maintaining legitimacy on his platform, he said.

“I’ve basically lived in a computer all my life, and nothing gives me more joy — well almost nothing — than when thousands of people use the software I built to solve a problem in their life,” Frey said.

In phone interviews this week, Frey explained how users on his platform must sell at least half of the reservations that they post or risk account suspension. This prevents people from trying to book all the available tables and hoard them to create artificial demand. Also, the free-market style platform means that unsold reservations put downward pressure on the prices in a given area, he said.

The app is still quite new in the New Orleans market as there have only been a handful of transactions, so the current 90-day average bid prices have been skewed by reservations sold during special events such as the Super Bowl. Frey said those “one-offs” are not the norm.

In a market such as New Orleans, diners can typically get reservations without paying if it’s a normal weekend, but it can be next-to-impossible at certain restaurants in other cities. Reservation trading lets people sell valuable bookings that they, for whatever reason, can’t use or no longer want,

When someone has a coveted reservation but a scheduling conflict prevents them from using it, they might not bother calling to cancel, leading to what restaurants call “no-show reservations.”

Just a few no-shows can disrupt a restaurant’s operations and cost it thousands in lost sales. Approximately 28% of American diners have admitted to ghosting on their reservations, according to a 2021 OpenTable survey.

“Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if you could just resell it?” Frey asked.

Lisa Blount, director of marketing for Antoine’s, said she’s all in favor of entrepreneurs figuring out new ways to make money in the restaurant industry. She’s less worried about no-shows because Antoine’s requires credit cards to make reservations, but she does have a few other concerns.

At Antoine’s and other fine dining eateries, the staff take a lot of time to learn about their customers when they make a reservation, Blount said. They might be on a tight schedule, have diet restrictions or could be visiting for a special occasion. This kind of information allows the restaurant to make preparations with food ordering, shift scheduling and other arrangements.

“There’s a lot more to coming to our restaurant than just buying a ticket,” Blount said. “We try to know a lot about you before you even get in the door.”

Blount said she worries that trading or selling reservations to unknown customers could stymie a restaurant’s ability to offer its best level of service. She also said she hates the idea of an unwitting customer paying for a reservation and then showing up and seeing empty tables because it turned out to be a slow evening. The customer would feel scammed, and it could damage the restaurant’s reputation, she said.

Still, Blount said she’s open to the concept of reservation trading if there are ways to control for those kinds of issues.

Frey said he is actively trying to partner with restaurants to make the app better for all parties. His platform currently takes a 30% cut of each transaction, and he offers partner restaurants an equal share of the net proceeds. So far, Frey said he has not landed any partnership agreements as he tries to keep his company alive through an onslaught of state legislation.

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Bans on reservation trading apps are already in place in New York and Arizona, and a similar bill is currently pending in the Illinois legislature.

Some large corporations could lose a chunk of their business if reservation trading catches on. Restaurant booking platforms such as OpenTable and Resy are free for customers to use. They make money by charging restaurants a fee for every reservation made through their app.

Platforms like Appointment Trader threaten to disrupt the online booking sector by flipping that business model on its head. Under Frey’s partnership model, restaurants would get paid just to let customers inside.

But all that depends on genuine demand existing in a particular market area.

“There’s so many restaurants here,” Blount said from her New Orleans office. “We’re not New York.”

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

Under renewed pressure from right-wing election deniers, the Louisiana Legislature abandoned its attempt to repeal a 2021 law that has made the task of buying voting machines overly burdensome.

House Bill 856, sponsored by Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Pineville, died just one step shy of final passage during the closing days of the 2024 legislative session after Johnson ended conference committee negotiations.

The proposal would have repealed parts of a 2021 law that added multiple layers of bureaucracy to the Louisiana Department of State’s process to purchase new voting systems. The most significant parts of the bill were created through a late-stage amendment adopted on the Senate floor last week.

In an interview Sunday, Johnson said he decided to sideline the bill after some constituents and other lawmakers expressed concerns with the “process” used to amend the bill into its final version.

Typically, most scrutiny and vetting of legislation occurs during committee hearings before a bill reaches the floor of a chamber, so late-stage floor amendments that make big changes to a bill can sometimes generate pushback from other lawmakers or constituents.

Johnson’s legislation began as a simple one-page bill to add a short clause to an existing statute, making the secretary of state responsible for all “voting system maintenance and repair.” That version of the bill sailed through both chambers without opposition. It wasn’t until a May 8 Senate & Governmental Affairs Committee hearing when lawmakers first hinted at the possibility of an amendment.

At the hearing, lawmakers asked Secretary of State Nancy Landry for an update on the purchase of new voting machines. Landry, a Republican, said it was her “number one priority” but that the 2021 law had turned the acquisition into a “long and drawn out process.”

In a later interview, Landry’s spokesperson, Joel Watson, said the process involves multiple layers of bureaucratic red tape that will delay the purchase of new voting machines an additional two years.

The 2021 law created the Voting System Commission within the Louisiana Department of State. Composed of government officials who serve without compensation, the commission is charged with analyzing any available voting systems and recommending a specific type to the secretary of state. It also created a separate Voting System Proposal Evaluation Committee to independently review vendors that submitted bids before making a final recommendation.

Senate & Governmental Affairs Committee members only briefly discussed the bureaucratic issues at the May 8 hearing and advanced the original version of Johnson’s bill without amendments. It wasn’t until May 29 when the bill came up for a Senate floor vote that the public and most lawmakers saw the extent of the changes Landry was requesting through an amendment from Sen. Mike Reese, R-Leesville. Still, the new amended version of the bill cleared the chamber with unanimous support.

The amended version proposed to keep both the Voting System Commission and the Voting System Proposal Evaluation Committee with some small changes. It would have repealed requirements that the secretary of state create rules for the purchase of voting machines and hire at least three independent experts to certify them.

“We didn’t want to take away these parts of the bill geared toward transparency,” Watson said in an interview at the time. “We just didn’t want to have to go through a massive two-year-extra process … The system we have now is far too old to go through a process that would add two additional years.”

The state’s current voting machines are almost 35 years old and have become difficult and costly to repair because parts are no longer made for them. If Johnson’s bill had passed and become law, the state could have acquired new voting machines in about three years as opposed to five, Watson said.

Lawmakers created the Voting System Commission and all the other sweeping requirements under pressure from a small group of Donald Trump supporters who came to the State Capitol several times during the 2021 legislative session and bogged down public hearings with far-fetched conspiracy theories on the 2020 presidential election.

Louisiana struggles to buy new voting machines after placating election deniers

They alleged the election was fraudulently stolen from Trump without actual evidence to support their claims, but that didn’t stop some Republicans on the panel from embracing the lies.

Many of the baseless arguments were about Dominion Voting Systems, a voting machine vendor that many Trump supporters falsely accused of rigging the election.

In 2023, Dominion won a nearly $800 million defamation lawsuit settlement against Fox News, which spread some of the conspiracy theories. Court filings, as detailed in The New York Times and other sources, exposed scores of internal emails and text messages showing Fox’s biggest TV personalities and executives collaborating with top GOP operatives and knowingly repeating lies on the air.

By that time, much of the damage caused by Trump’s “Big Lie” had already taken its toll. In 2021, Louisiana Republicans had forced then-Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, also a Republican, to cancel open bidding for new voting machines because they said the bid language was too favorable to Dominion.

Other false allegations came from a right-wing activist’s film, “2,000 Mules,” that has been widely debunked by law enforcement agencies, independent experts and media investigations. Even the conservative media group that published it later halted all distribution of the film, pulled it from their platforms and issued an apology on their website.

The film falsely alleged Democrat-aligned “ballot mules” were supposedly paid to illegally collect and drop off ballots in swing states during the 2020 presidential election. But the ballot harvesting allegations were based on faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data, which is not precise enough to confirm someone deposited a ballot into a drop box, according to experts quoted in an Associated Press report.

Landry, herself, backed legislation this session to stop ballot harvesting even though she and her predecessor, Ardoin, have affirmed Louisiana has not seen any instances of widespread voter fraud.

When word got out about big changes to Johnson’s bill, some election deniers sprung into action and began to accuse Reese, Johnson and Landry of being a part of the conspiracy and surreptitiously trying to repeal the 2021 law.

Chris Alexander with the right-wing Louisiana Citizen Advocacy Group accused Landry of using Johnson’s bill in an attempt to accumulate “enormous unchecked power” and dismantle government checks and balances.

“This thing is a train wreck, and we have every reason to believe that this was done by design — not by accident,” Alexander said on a podcast last week. “… I can’t help but think that this is so that the election can go the way that some people want it to go.”

Landry’s office has pushed back on Alexander’s allegations and pointed out that the amendments left the main elements of the 2021 law intact.

Had the bill become law, the process of buying voting machines would still be subject to oversight from the House and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget. The vetting and solicitation process would have still included the public input through the Voting System Commission and the Voting System Proposal Evaluation Committee. Also, the bill would have retained requirements that vendors disclose their investors, including any foreign sources of financial support, Watson said.

“It is unfortunate that some groups were dishonest in their opposition to much-needed reforms to current law,” Watson wrote in a text message Tuesday.

Although he sidelined the bill, Johnson said he still supports the changes it proposed and intends to work on the issue again next year.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and Twitter.

What if every imported seafood product for sale in Louisiana had a red sticker with the word “Imported” affixed to the front of its packaging?

That question is one of several the state Seafood Safety Task Force is asking in an effort to address a struggling domestic fishery and increasing health risks from imported catch.

The task force met Friday for just the second time in over a decade following a long dormant period that ended last month.

State Sen. Fred Mills, R-St. Martinville, chairs the task force that he said will try to develop solutions to address three areas: the health and safety of consumers, the economy of the domestic seafood sector, and consumer education.

An influx of cheap foreign catch has flooded the seafood market in Louisiana, and most restaurants in the state choose to serve imported shrimp and crawfish to patrons who are either oblivious to it or mistakenly believe they’re eating local fare, according to the Louisiana Shrimp Association. The effects have decimated a local industry and unique Louisiana culture while also potentially introducing harmful contaminants into the food supply.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is the primary line of defense protecting consumers from such risks, but the agency screens only about 2% of the foreign catch that arrives at U.S. ports of entry, according to a Government Accountability Office report. Of that small amount sampled, roughly 10% has tested positive for contaminants. For comparison, the European Union, the world’s largest seafood importer, screens about 50%.

Louisiana has tried to close the gap by deploying health inspectors to test samples at the 58 permitted wholesale distributors of imported seafood across the state.

It’s not enough, however. The health department currently has funding for just four inspectors, and it typically takes about eight days to get results back from the state lab, according to agency officials. Contaminated food can reach millions of people in that amount of time.

The task force is researching ways to pay for more testing through tariffs or fees and to shift the testing higher up along the supply chain as close as possible to the source.

There have been 2,600 violations of Louisiana’s imported shrimp law — and no fines

But additional testing can only go so far. Kim Chauvin, a shrimp exporter and president of the Women’s Southern Fisheries Alliance, said there are different ways foreign exporters have circumvented seafood inspectors.

If a batch of foreign seafood is rejected at a port, some companies will try to slip it in through a different destination, Chauvin said.

Even more frustrating and almost universally decried in Louisiana is deceptive labeling that exploits local cultural references.

The task force mentioned Boudreaux’s Brand Crawfish Tail Meat, which can be found in almost any Louisiana grocery store. Everything about the product suggests it’s from Louisiana, from its use of a classic Cajun name to the words “Wild Caught” in large lettering across the label.

At the bottom of the label, it lists a Westwego address and a logo in the shape of Louisiana for its distributor, Gulf Marine Products Co.. However, a keen observer will notice a declaration elsewhere on the label: “Product of China.”

“They’re using our culture, they’re using our heritage,” Chauvin said. “It’s a huge problem, and it’s very deceiving.”

Several members of the panel said shrimp laid out on an ice display at grocery stores is often taken out of the similar frozen packages that may or may not be from a foreign country. The catch might be advertised as “Wild Caught Gulf Shrimp,” but it often deliberately fails to specify which gulf it came from.

One idea the panel discussed is a state law that would require all foreign seafood products to have a brightly-colored or otherwise easy-to-read sticker or tag that says, “Imported.” That way consumers are never confused or uncertain about what they’re buying.

Another problem, Chauvin said, is that some Louisiana schools are serving foreign shrimp to kids for lunch. Schools are exempt from the state’s labeling law that requires food service establishments to indicate on their menus or on a sign if they serve imported shrimp or crawfish.

Chauvin said school systems will call her company to get a quote for her shrimp but almost always choose the cheaper foreign-sourced options.

The panel’s next meeting is scheduled for Nov. 27. Mills said he has invited an official from the Port of New Orleans to provide information on food imports and customs.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and Twitter.

The U.S. Supreme Court this week created an uncertain outlook for Louisiana’s congressional races next year, deciding to let a lawsuit against the state’s new district maps run its current course.

The justices declined to intervene on an unusual ruling from a federal appeals court last month that paused the drawing of new district boundaries to give Louisiana’s Black voters more equitable representation in Congress.

Thursday’s ruling keeps the lawsuit under review in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. A group of Black voters sued Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin and other state officials to stop the maps the Republican-dominated Louisiana Legislature approved last year.

NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney Jared Evans told the Illuminator the Supreme Court ruling is not a big deal. The LDF, which represents the plaintiffs, plans to proceed with a lower court hearing on Feb. 5, 2024, to have new maps drawn.

The case, Robinson v. Ardoin, stems from a congressional map with just one majority-Black district lawmakers adopted in defiance of federal district court order. Louisiana’s Black population exceeds 30%, which the court said merits a second Black district out of six total.

In Thursday’s brief ruling with no dissents, the justices denied two requests from the plaintiffs to restart the drawing of the map after the 5th Circuit last month canceled a lower court hearing at which U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick was expected to approve a map containing two majority-Black congressional districts. Louisiana Attorney General and Gov.-elect Jeff Landry had filed a request to stop Dick’s planned hearing, claiming it was rushed in a “clear abuse of discretion.”

Court watchers stressed how unusual it was for an appeals court to approve a request of that nature. Even Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted it in her concurring opinion on Thursday’s ruling.

5th Circuit cancels redrawing of Louisiana’s congressional district map

Nonetheless, the justices declined to intervene, which could jeopardize the creation of a second majority-Black district in time for next fall’s election, though Evans said he remains optimistic.

“Despite all the back and forth and legal maneuvering, we are firmly committed to having a map in place before next year’s elections,” he said.

Evans pointed out statements Jackson included in her opinion that addressed the issue.

“First, nothing in our decision not to summarily reverse the Fifth Circuit should be taken to endorse the practice of issuing an extraordinary writ of mandamus in these or similar circumstances,” Jackson wrote. “Second, as we have previously emphasized, this litigation should be resolved ‘in advance of the 2024 congressional elections in Louisiana.’”

Jackson added that the 5th Circuit’s mandamus ruling requires the lower court to delay the map drawing only until the Louisiana Legislature has had sufficient time to consider alternative maps that comply with the Voting Rights Act, but, she noted, the legislature has told the Supreme Court it doesn’t plan to consider any alternative maps.

“The State has now represented, in its filings before this Court, that the legislature will not consider such maps while litigation over the enacted map is pending,” Jackson wrote. “Therefore, the District Court will presumably resume the remedial process while the Fifth Circuit considers the State’s appeal of the preliminary injunction.”

In other words, the case should continue along two tracks. The lower court will hold hearings to adopt a new map in the event that the appeals court resolves the case in favor of the plaintiffs. That’s at least the plan for now, but the defendants have so far been very successful at delaying the case.

The case has traveled a meandering journey of motions, hearings, trials and appeals up and down the federal judicial system — from a lower district court in Baton Rouge to the Supreme Court in Washington D.C. and back again with various stops along the way at the appeals court in New Orleans.

After the initial proceeding last year, Dick ruled that GOP lawmakers violated the federal Voting Rights Act in gerrymandering the map to diminish the voting power of Black residents. Dick originally planned to set in place a new map of Louisiana’s U.S. House districts by June 29, 2022, as one of her final orders in the case. However, the GOP state officials asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the ruling, which it did just one day before Dick planned to draw a second Black district.

On June 28, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the Louisiana case, snatching it out of Dick’s courtroom and shutting down any hope Black voters had of gaining representation for last year’s congressional midterm elections. The results kept five white Republicans and one Black Democrat in the state’s U.S. House delegation. The state’s population is one-third Black.

The case picked back up when the Supreme Court ruled in a similar redistricting case, Allen v. Milligan, that Alabama’s congressional maps were racially gerrymandered in violation of the Voting Rights Act. It returned the Louisiana lawsuit to Dick’s court in Baton Rouge and the 5th Circuit in New Orleans, with no explanation as to why it had stayed the case. Different aspects of the case were being considered in those two venues at the time the Supreme Court halted everything a year ago, and it remains that way aside from the current delay the defendants recently won with the appeals court mandamus.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and Twitter.