Jim Beam column:New voting machines overdue
Louisiana legislators have come up with a new system for buying new voting machines that some watchdogs are worried about.(Image courtesy of nola.com).
Louisiana has always had an election system that ranks among the most trustworthy in the country. However, the national conspiracy about the 2020 election being stolen from President Donald Trump resulted in the Legislature creating what is called 'an overly burdensome system for buying voting machines.'
The Louisiana Illuminator in 2024 said the 2021 law created the Voting System Commission within the Louisiana Department of State. It is charged with analyzing any available voting systems and recommending a specific type to the secretary of state.
Legislators also created a separate Voting System Proposal Evaluation Committee to independently review vendors that submitted bids before making a final recommendation.
Joel Watson, a spokesperson for Secretary of State Nancy Landry, said the multiple layers of bureaucratic red tape would mean it would take five rather than three years to purchase new voting machines. And time is important because the Illuminator said the state's current machines are 35 years old and have become difficult and costly to repair.
The Illuminator said an effort was made in 2024 to shorten the selection process but it failed '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 committee hearings with far-fetched election conspiracy theories involving the 2020 presidential election…'
Many of the baseless arguments were about Dominion Voting Systems, a voting machine vendor that many Trump supporters falsely accused of rigging the election. Dominion in 2023 won a nearly $800 million defamation lawsuit against Fox News, which spread some of the conspiracy theories.
Now another effort appears to be under way to purchase those machines. The Advocate reported Thursday that House Bill 577 by Rep. Daryl Deshotel, R-Marksville, which has passed both the House and Senate, authorizes the elections department to purchase a new voting system using a bidding process called 'invitation to negotiate.'
An 'invitation to negotiate' (ITN) is a type of solicitation used in procurement, where the buyer invites potential suppliers to submit proposals and then negotiates with the most promising ones to achieve the best possible outcome. It's a competitive process where factors beyond price, like experience, project plans, and design features, can be considered.
The newspaper said the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana says the new process could lead to less transparency. It is a substitute for the open bidding process, which has delayed purchase of new machines because of lawsuits filed by unsuccessful bidders.
Watson said Gov. Jeff Landry hopes to have a new voting system finalized by the end of 2025 and begin a 'phased-in implementation' of the new system in 2026.
Under the new system, the state invites vendors to submit competitive sealed responses as a starting point for negotiations. It is then empowered to select which vendors it wants to continue negotiations with. Louisiana currently uses voting machines from Dominion and it will be interesting to see whether Dominion is asked for a response.
The state's current machines don't include a paper trail, making it impossible to double-check election results. Absentee and mail-in ballots are on paper and can be checked, but over 90% of Louisiana voters cast their ballots in person.
Landry defends the new selection process, saying negotiation is a public bid process. 'It's just more flexible …. It allows you to exchange more information than (a request for proposals) does.'
Melinda Deslatte, the research director for PAR, said, 'We just want to make sure that there will be something available for the public to see at the end of this process to understand why the secretary of state's office chose the vendor that it chose.'
Deslatte added, 'We're not entirely certain yet if that information will be publicly available. But we're hopeful because the secretary of state's office has indicated that they expect this to be a transparent process.'
The PAR concerns are legitimate because the Landry administration has been active in trying to close public records. Landry and other top officials in his administration most of the time also refuse to respond to news media questions.
We hope things will be different and that this new voting machine purchasing process will be open widely to the general public.
Jim Beam, the retired editor of the American Press, has covered people and politics for more than six decades. Contact him at 337-515-8871 or jim.beam.press@gmail.com. Reply Forward
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