Legislature passes second attempt to prohibit election donations

The Louisiana Legislature passed a bill Thursday that would prohibit state and local officials from receiving money from private or nonprofit organizations to help defray election-related expenses — a measure that Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoed last year.

House Bill 20, sponsored by Rep. Blake Miguez (R-Erath), is the second attempt by Republican lawmakers to prohibit the state from receiving the kind of donations that nonprofits offered last year to pay for expenses such as polling signs, tents, hand sanitizer, and personal protective equipment for poll workers.

On Thursday, the measure passed the Senate in a 26–11 party-line vote with Republicans in favor and Democrats against. The current bill differs from last year’s in that it would not apply to “the donation of private property for use as a polling place or to the donation or use of equipment for the restoration and maintenance of utilities to a precinct or polling place in the event of an outage.”

Miguez wrote last year’s bill after the nonpartisan nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life, in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, offered grants to jurisdictions around the country to help pay for election expenses. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated $250 million. The CTCL also received funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Knight Foundation and Google, among other American companies and organizations. 

Republican Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin was willing to receive the financial assistance and initially urged local court clerks and voter registrars to apply for the grants. However, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry accused Facebook of having a left-leaning agenda and told the election officials they’d be violating the law if they took it. 

Miguez argued then that it was already illegal for any Louisiana election official to receive such help, but he also argued that lawmakers needed to pass his bill declaring such help illegal.

Landry then filed a civil suit against CTCL in an attempt to prohibit the program, alleging the organization targeted specific areas of the state into which to pump money for “an inherently insidious and corrupting effect.” A judge in the 16th Judicial District in St. Martin Parish ruled against the attorney general but not in enough time for the state’s election officials to reapply for help before November’s presidential election. 

Election officials in Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin had already received CTCL grants when Louisiana election officials were notified that they too would receive the money. 

In his Oct. 27 veto message of last year’s bill, Gov. Edwards wrote, “Neither the bill’s author nor the Attorney General’s Office was able to point to the statutory conflict House Bill 51 is purportedly intended to resolve….House Bill 51 is an unnecessary political ploy that only serves to threaten the safety of polling places during a pandemic and increase the costs to taxpayers to administer safe elections.”