NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — Governor John Bel Edwards has announced that the NOLATOYA recall effort to remove New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell has fallen short of its signature requirements.
On Tuesday, officials with the Orleans Parish Registrar of Voters delivered the certified recall documents to the state capital, just one day ahead of Wednesday’s deadline. From there, the Governor’s Office took over the petition documents, which the Registrar said have been reviewed and certified twice.
Although certified and delivered to the Governor, the total count of signatures was not released. However, less than three hours after the signatures were delivered, the Governor’s Office determined the signature count was insufficient to trigger a recall election.
To trigger a recall election, organizers needed to collect handwritten signatures from 20% of the voting population in Orleans Parish within 180 days from when the petition was announced back in August.
Earlier this month, Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin determined that New Orleans had 225,000 registered voters, meaning that about 45,000 signatures were needed to move forward — something the Mayor is currently suing the Secretary of State for, claiming he had no authority to lower the signature count for the recall effort.
Edwards said Tuesday that the total number of signatures collected was 67,022, however, only 27,243 of those were registered voters in the parish — more than 15,000 signatures short of the requirement.
NOLATOYA organizers have said they plan to challenge the accuracy of the count.
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