Louisiana restores status for 67K voters after database error

Louisiana has restored active status to all voters mistakenly classified as inactive during a database maintenance error Monday that affected about 67,000 people.

Trey Williams, deputy secretary of state for communications and policy, told The Center Square the office corrected the error and returned the affected voters to active status.

“We corrected the error later that day and moved everyone who was temporarily changed back to active voter status,” Williams said in an emailed response.

The error occurred during routine database maintenance Monday night.

Williams said the error did not affect anyone’s eligibility or ability to vote. An inactive designation does not cancel a voter’s registration.

The office attributed the incident to human error but did not explain the specific action that caused the status changes.

“It was caused by human error. We have placed additional internal safeguards to prevent this from happening again,” Williams said.

His response did not describe those safeguards.

The office also could not provide a parish-by-parish count of affected voters.

“The impacted individuals were located across the state. We do not have a parish-by-parish breakdown of those impacted,” Williams said.

Under the secretary of state’s published guidance, voters ordinarily may be marked inactive when their parish registrar cannot verify their address during an annual canvass or when correspondence is returned as undeliverable.

Voters whose addresses have not changed remain eligible to vote but must confirm their address when voting, according to that guidance.

Williams encouraged voters to review their registration information before the election.

“As always before an election, we encourage voters to check their registration status, information, and sample ballots by logging into the voter portal at Geauxvote.com or using the Geauxvote app,” he said.