Amid charges, countercharges and court filings, the effort to recall New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell passed a milestone this week as organizers filed their signatures with the Orleans Parish registrar of voters.
Recall organizers said Monday that they had collected enough signatures – 20 percent of eligible voters in the city – to file the recall petition. Just under 50,000 valid signatures are needed to initiate a recall election.
Supporters of the recall pointed to what they said was an unacceptable level of street crime in the city, poor city services and ethical issues involving Cantrell.
As the recall signature-collecting process entered the home stretch, a couple of lawsuits added to the political drama. A lawsuit was filed on behalf of a New Orleans journalist to obtain the names of those who signed recall petitions – information that is considered a public record. That lawsuit, however, was dropped after the recall organizers agreed to make the names available once they were submitted to the registrar.
And on Feb. 16, recall organizers Eileen Carter and Belden Batiste sued both the Orleans Parish registrar and Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, arguing that the local voting rolls were inaccurate because 30,000 voters listed had moved out of the region or were otherwise ineligible to vote.
In response, a statement provided by Ardoin’s office to the Louisiana Record said local officials have primary responsibility for the upkeep of voter rolls.
“Parish registrars are both constitutionally and statutorily tasked with the management of Louisiana’s voter rolls,” the statement says. “Among the many tools that are available to them are lists provided by the Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections and the Louisiana Department of Health.”
In addition, the secretary of state said he and his Elections Division have supported efforts to make the integrity of voter rolls a top priority. Ardoin supported legislation in 2021 and last year to do that by adding supplemental yearly canvass periods for parish registrars, but Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoes those measures.
State and federal laws also offer registrars additional tools to remove deceased persons, people who have moved away or those who are ineligible due to criminal convictions from the rolls, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
If Cantrell loses a recall election, New Orleans council members would vote to appoint one of the two council-members-at-large to be acting mayor for the remainder of the mayoral term, according to recall organizers.