A former Army colonel who has been subpoenaed by the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the nation’s Capitol testified for over an hour before a Louisiana panel looking into how to upgrade the state’s voting machines.
James P. “Phil” Waldron was invited to speak to the Louisiana Voting System Commission meeting on Dec. 14. Waldron, who federal lawmakers allege briefed several U.S. Congress members about 2020 election fraud theories, told the commission members in Baton Rouge that current voting systems are problematic due to lax identification for mail-in ballots, vendor-controlled tallying of ballots and auditing vulnerabilities.
Louisiana should consider choosing an updated voting system that focuses on hand counting of ballots by precinct workers, he told the panel.
“We seek a system that makes it harder to cheat and easier to vote,” Waldron said, emphasizing the need for government photo identification to assure all votes are legal.
A spokesman for the Secretary of State’s Office said some of the former colonel’s recommendations went beyond the jurisdiction of the Voting System Commission, which was set up by state lawmakers and is chaired by Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin.
“The commission is charged with selecting a paper-based voting system,” John Tobler told the Louisiana Record. “Suggestions regarding items such as registration and vote-counting procedures are outside of the scope of their efforts.”
The commission has been charged with choosing a technology that upholds Louisiana voting laws so that thousands of older voting machines can be replaced.
Some of the panel’s members said his recommendations on hand counting over machine counting could make the overall process more labor-intensive and increase the time needed to complete the vote-counting process. Local jurisdictions have difficulty now enough voluteers to staff voting precincts, they said.
Two days after he testified in Baton Rouge, Jan. 6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) issued a subpoena for his records and testimony.
“Mr. Waldron reportedly played a role in promoting claims of election fraud and circulating potential strategies for challenging results of the 2020 election,” Thompson said in a prepared statement. “He was also apparently in communication with officials in the Trump White House and in Congress discussing his theories in the weeks leading up to the January 6th attack.”