A Louisiana group of formerly incarcerated people that has urged the Secretary of State’s Office to remove voting barriers hopes to avoid litigation through talks set to begin this week, the group’s attorney said Friday.
Bill Quigley, a professor at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, told the Louisiana Record that a lawsuit over concerns expressed by the group Voice of the Experienced might be avoided as a result of planned discussions with Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin’s office.
“VOTE’s attorneys have been contacted by counsel for the secretary of state, and we hope to talk next week,” Quigley told the Record in an email. “... We hope to be able to work this out with the SOS.”
There is no timetable to file a lawsuit in the event that the talks don’t prove productive, he said.
“If it becomes clear we cannot resolve these important issues, we will take this to court,” Quigley said.
An Oct. 22 demand letter from VOTE’s attorneys contends that Ardoin and Commissioner of Elections Sherri Wharton Hadsky have violated the National Voter Registration Act, which requires state officials to ensure that Louisiana has in place a nondiscriminatory, uniform electoral process.
A state law passed two years ago, Act 636, provides a path to voting for more than 40,000 individuals with past felony convictions, the letter states. But those people continue to face barriers to casting ballots though the illegal removal of some names from voting rolls and burdensome paperwork requirements, the letter states.
“Under 636, people on parole with felony records have the right to vote as long as they have been out for five years,” Quigley said in a prepared statement.
But those who served prison sentences or parole terms decades ago continue to be required to provide documentation to elections officials in person in order to prove they are no longer serving time, the letter said.
A request for comment sent to the Secretary of State’s Office was not immediately answered.
Nationally, an estimated 5.2 million U.S. residents cannot cast ballots due to a current or previous conviction for a felony offense, according to The Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C..
The VOTE letter makes clear that the group is prepared to take the matter to the courts.
“If the state does not take corrective action to address these concerns, we are prepared to proceed with litigation of these issues, asserting claims under the (National Voting Rights Act) and other applicable causes of action,” the letter states.