After Cantrell recall failure, legislators file bills to lower signature threshold, keep sheets private

A week after the demise of the recall campaign against New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, legislators from St. Tammany and Jefferson parishes have filed bills to lower the recall threshold and eliminate a provision requiring organizers to treat signature sheets as public records.

Had it been in place last August, the first bill would have pushed the Cantrell recall well over the signature cutoff, while the second would have spared organizers from having to produce records that provided a window into their opaque campaign.

While state Rep. Paul Hollis, of Covington, and Sen. Cameron Henry, of Metairie, are both Republicans, they say their bills aren’t sour grapes over the failure of a recall that targeted a Democratic mayor. Instead, they are designed to address shortcomings in state law, laid bare during the recent recall effort.

Lowering the trigger

The most obvious issue is the recall threshold, Hollis said. The fact that a $1.2 million campaign, with TV advertising and a team of paid canvassers, fell far short of its goal was only the most recent evidence that Louisiana recall law sets an impossibly high bar, he said.

“We give people a carrot that they just cannot reach,” said Hollis. “I have always thought they ought to be hard, but at the same time they ought to be achievable.”

Under current law, organizers in big cities like New Orleans must collect signatures from over 20% of active voters. That’s lower than an earlier trigger of 33%, thanks to previous legislation from Hollis, but it still creates a high hurdle.

Under Hollis’s latest proposal, organizers would need to collect signatures equal to 20% of turnout in the official’s most recent election. If that official was elected without opposition, the trigger would be set against turnout in the most recent contested election.

In Cantrell’s case, the bill would have dramatically lowered the threshold for recall organizers, had it been in place last year. Instead of the 49,976 signatures they needed at the start of their campaign, organizers would have had to collect a mere 15,065 signatures. They actually gathered 27,243 valid signatures.

Hollis said he sees his bill as a “cattle call” for recall reform. He is also receptive to the idea of having organizers turn their signatures in to parish registrars at intervals, instead of in a single, final petition drop that could overwhelm officials.

Other changes

Lowering the trigger isn’t the only change that’s been proposed in the wake of the Cantrell recall’s failure. Orleans Parish Registrar of Sandra Wilson has proposed shifting the responsibility for counting signatures to another office, citing the demands the process placed upon her small staff.

Meanwhile, Joshua Spivak, a national expert on recall elections, says Louisiana should reconsider the unusual five-day period where voters can add or subtract their names from a recall petition. Many states allow for a short period where voters and campaigns can fix problems with voter information, but Spivak is unaware of any other state where voters can add their name to a petition.

At 180 days, Louisiana already has one of the nation’s most generous time periods for signature gathering.

“That’s a lot of confusion for very little benefit. You could see that petitioners could turn it in at the wrong time because of that,” he said. “You want to be as clear as possible.”

Public records shift

Henry’s bill wouldn’t necessarily make it easier for organizers to force a vote. But it would eliminate an unusual provision in Louisiana law that requires them to serve as custodians of public records.

The Cantrell recall organizers first ignored, then fought, then partially complied with a records request from The Times-Picayune for their signature sheets. The partial documents they produced under a court order showed that they had proof of only about 32,000 signatures, providing the first warning sign that organizers had fallen far short of their goal.

Henry, the state senator, pointed to a provision in recall law that allows citizens to add or remove their name from a petition for five days after it has been submitted to a parish registrar of voters.

“It’s common sense, at least in my world, that a public document should not be considered public until it is 100% accurate,” he said.

Recall petitions would still become public records, but only after their certification by a registrar of voters, Henry said. The change to the law would also allow organizers to simply discard their petitions if they know they haven’t met the trigger, he said.