FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 6, 2019
Contact: Kaleb Harmon
kaleb@lademo.org

Louisiana Democratic Party Releases Statement on Kyle Ardoin Candidacy

Baton Rouge, LA – On Tuesday, Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin officially filed his re-election bid for the office.

“The best case against having Kyle Ardoin serve as Secretary of State is to watch him try to serve as Secretary of State,” Stephen Handwerk, executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party said. “Over the past year, we’ve watched him fail to address our election cybersecurity, botch contracts to replace our voter machines, and attempt to strip away election results because he didn’t agree with how they turned out. He may be using the slogan ‘Keep Kyle’ but we think it’s best that we keep Kyle away from the office of Secretary of State.”

While serving as Secretary of State, Ardoin has made sure our election security and voter rights aren’t a priority. A report from the Brennan Center, Alliance for Securing Democracy, R Street Institute and Pitt Cyber found that Louisiana still hasn’t addressed critical cybersecurity concerns surrounding our elections. These issues still haven’t been addressed since the 2018 election even though Ardoin boasted during it that he was the only candidate who has the “unique cyber security experience to deal with the election issues that face our state today.” 

Ardoin also failed to secure new voting machines for the 2019 election, keeping our state vulnerable to outside interference. Ardoin botched a contract to replace Louisiana’s 10,000 voting machines back in 2018 and has still not rectified it in time for the biggest election in our state where every statewide official and the entire legislature will be up for election.

Instead of focusing on these glaring cybersecurity issues, Ardoin instead dedicated his office to pursue a lawsuit that would have disenfranchised the voters of Lafayette. In conjunction with Attorney General Jeff Landry, he attempted to sue the Lafayette City Parish Council three separate times to overturn a Democratically-elected home charter rule which he was ruled against every time. This lawsuit wasted taxpayers’ money, state resources, and was a glaring attempt to disenfranchise the election of the people of Lafayette.

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