Mirroring a trend seen nationally, Lafayette Parish election officials have been hounded with requests for data they do not collect, questions about voting systems they do not use and threats of litigation.
Four requests filed since August, just ahead of this fall’s midterm elections, arrived just in time to cause headaches for local election officials.
“They’re doing this now in the middle of getting ready for the November election,” says Lafayette Parish Clerk of Court Louis Perret. “I believe they’re doing this on purpose to gum up the works.”
These requests are in line with a recent string of targeted requests potentially inspired by election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, who has urged supporters to obtain “cast vote records” from local officials. Lindell has been promoting unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud during the 2020 presidential election and was sued by a voting systems manufacturer for defamation.
Cast vote records are common documents meant to authenticate individual votes with a paper trail. But the Lafayette Parish Clerk of Court does not collect the kind of data the requests are looking for, Perret says.
In simple terms, a cast vote record is a way to view all of the selections a voter made on the ballot. A paper ballot, for instance, would be considered a cast vote record. They’re common, but some jurisdictions’ voting machines create digital spreadsheets instead to record how an individual voted.
Voting machines in Louisiana do create cast vote records, according to the secretary of state’s office, but not in a way that would produce the data these requests are seeking.
The timing of the requests, reported in election offices across the country, appears linked to an upcoming deadline — 22 months from the 2020 presidential election, the retention window for voting records, according to federal election law.
Thousands of requests have been filed as that window closes, says Charles Stewart III, head of MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab.
“Somebody in the Lindell camp realized the 22-month window of retention in the Voting Rights Act was about to expire,” Stewart says.
In August, Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin suspended the 22-month retention window, requiring local election officials to hold those records while the Legislature takes up recommendations from a commission convened in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
Lindell himself spoke with the voting commission in June, where he was given extra time to speak by Ardoin.
While Perret’s office has received fewer inquiries than other election offices, he says the handful of requests cause problems for his office. They still take time and money to process. The threat of litigation requires the office to ready its lawyers to receive any claims.
“We got to notify the attorney, notify our insurance carrier,” Perret says. “All of this costs money.”
It’s unclear whether those filing the requests are directly linked to any election conspiracy group. But the language in their requests is similar to the wording Lindell has used and that has shown up in requests across the country.
Lindell and others have stressed their efforts are about ensuring election “integrity” and restoring faith in voting processes. Perret, like many other election officials, doesn’t see it that way.
“It has nothing to do with government transparency,” Perret says. “We already have [transparency]. Whenever we conduct elections, it is all done in public meetings that the public is invited to.
“I am open to any evidence that shows corruption in elections.”