NEW ORLEANS (WGNO)— The active voter roll will shrink as a result of court settlement reached between the Registrar of Voters and NOLATOYA.org organizers.
WGNO’s Kenny Lopez spoke to a woman whose grandmother has been dead for decades, but somehow still received a recall petition to sign in the mail.
Mary Treadway Walker died 25 years ago and her granddaughter is questioning why her grandma is still on the active voter rolls in Orleans Parish?
“We bought my grandparent’s house when my grandma passed away 25 years ago, and about 6 or 8 weeks ago in the mail I got a letter addressed to her from the recall effort,” she said.
If it wasn’t for the recall mailers she would’ve never known her grandma was still considered an active voter.
“That the system is broken and clearly there needs to be other ways to do this because if 25 years later my 120-year old dead grandmother is considered an active voter, that’s a problem,” she said.
Now the Secretary of State and Registrar of Voters are working on fixing the problem. A court settlement was reached where the rolls must be corrected—moving about 25-thousand names to the inactive voter list. These are those who have died or moved away.
“Well I think it is fair. You can’t base the numbers on active voters when people are dead. They can’t be considered active voters,” Mrs. Walker’s Granddaughter said.
Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin said in a statement, “It is vital that we have more tools to ensure an accurate voter registration list—namely a supplemental canvass to address individuals who are deceased, ineligible to vote in Louisiana or have moved out of state.
With her grandma and tens of thousands of others being moved to inactive this means the recall effort would need about 5-thousand fewer signatures.
“We didn’t know that we should do anything with the Registrar of Voters when she died, and I don’t think anyone else does,” she said.