Louisiana's weird history of democracy and voting machines (and why it still matters)
Governor Earl Long’s feud with Secretary of State Wade Martin culminated in a nationally broadcast screaming match in the legislature and the creation of an elected Custodian of Voting Machines
On Saturday, Louisianans will pick a new Governor and six other statewide officers; elect 39 state senators and 105 state representatives; and vote on four separate constitutional amendments. If, in any race, no statewide or legislative candidate receives a majority of the vote, a runoff election will be held on Saturday, November 18, when voters will also see four different constitutional amendments on the ballot.
Most of the attention has focused on the gubernatorial election, largely because there are few other games in town. Most state legislative races are unopposed. Of the seven statewide elections, two are entirely unopposed—the most since 2011. Even in the gubernatorial election, interest seems middling. Despite the fact that it’s Republicans’ best pickup opportunity in the country, and there’s been lots of outside spending, voter interest appears comparatively low.
But there’s a lot on the line for Louisiana in terms of election administration—and, more specifically, voting machines. As the team at Bolts has covered, Louisiana’s election infrastructure is aging and, most critically, its voting machines are dated. One candidate in the race for Secretary of State, who is a Big Lie proponent, has pushed to eliminate the use of voting machines altogether, proposing a switch to hand-counting ballots. The other Republican candidates haven’t embraced voter-fraud claims, and are generally supportive of replacing the state’s voting machines. Separately, Amendment 1, a constitutional amendment, would ban any private election funding—which reinforces baseless conspiracy theories that donations from people Mark Zuckerberg altered the 2020 election results. In a state with aging voting machines, a ban on such donations could further keep the state tethered to outdated election technology.
In other words, voting machines are on the ballot in Louisiana in a way that they haven’t been since 1972, when Louisiana last elected a State Custodian of Voting Machines.
That Louisiana elected a Statewide Custodian of Voting Machines for sixteen years may seem rather silly—and it is—but it’s also emblematic of the long-standing dysfunction in many democracies in the Deep South.
So why did Louisiana have an elected Custodian of Voting Machines? Somewhat Strangely, it’s the exact same reason that the state has an elected Commissioner of Insurance: a member of the Long political family had a feud with another politician.
From 1939-40, 1948-52, and 1956-60, Earl K. Long—brother of infamous Governor Huey Long—served as Governor of Louisiana. He routinely feuded with members of the Martin family. Wade O. Martin, Sr., was a long-serving member of the state’s elected Public Service Commission, and Wade O. Martin, Jr., was the Secretary of State from 1944 to 1975.
Shortly after Long was elected in 1956, he began pushing to strip the junior Martin of some of his responsibilities. By virtue of serving as Secretary of State, Martin also served as the state custodian of voting machines, the commissioner of insurance, and as a member of the liquefied petroleum gas commission (and was separately compensated for each additional job). Long supported legislation that removed both responsibilities from Martin’s office, who he said held so many jobs that he was almost a “czar.” As reported by the Lafayette Advertiser:
Long has indicated he favors stripping the secretary of state as his duties as insurance commissioner, custodian of voting machines and chairman of the liquefied petroleum gas commission.
. . .
Long has suggested that a nonpartisan board should be placed in control of voting machines, taking jurisdiction away from the secretary of state.
Long said voting machines would gain more respect in Louisiana if complete control over them was removed “from a man who runs for public office every four years and his pa runs for office every six years.”
Long also moved to oppose the senior Martin in his bid for re-election, arranging for several of his allies to run for Martin’s seat.
Martin, Sr., alleged that Long was a “dictator” and “doublecrosser” who was engaged in “the most wicked political plot of his career.” Long, in turn, said:
I’m sure the good people of this state know he is mistaken. I don’t want to be a dictator, I want to do my dead level best to be a good governor. I won’t make one improper dollar. . . . No one is going to hurt his little son, Wade, unless he agitates around and brings harm to himself. . . . The people of this state know Mr. Martin well and they know Earl Long well, and I am sure they can judge who is trying to be sincere and who is trying to stir up a racket.
Martin didn’t take his prospective removal as state custodian or insurance commissioner well. When the bills were being debated in the legislature, Long and Martin got into a screaming match before a state legislative committee considering the bills, repeatedly grabbed the one available microphone from each other, and almost came to blows. Unsurprisingly, this spectacle made national news. From the Los Angeles Times:
Gov. Earl K. Long engaged in a public shouting, shoving and grabbing match with two opponents today reminiscent of the boisterous Louisiana politics in the day of his late brother, Sen. Huey Long. For more than two hours, the 61-year-old Governor was embroiled with Secretary of State Wade Martin, whom he is attempting to strip of his powers, and fiery States’ Rights Leader Leander Perez.
The Shreveport Times laid out some of the most aggressive bits of the exchange:
The first exchange came at the start of the hearing, when Martin objected as Long tried to interrupt his statement with a question.
“You’re just proving you’re not fit to be state insurance commissioner,” Long shouted.
Martin roared back, “and you’ve just displayed you shouldn’t be governor.”
. . .
Long jumped up to ask a question. He grabbed the microphone. “Let’s have order, Mr. Chairman, shouted Martin, snatching the microphone back as the crowd applauded.
“You can ask me when I’m through,” Martin told the governor. “You’ve heckled everybody else, but you’re not going to do it to me. Not unless this committee tells you to.”
Long grabbed the microphone again and began talking, while Martin shouted, “Mr. Sergeant-at-Arms, I appeal to you to have order in this House.”
. . .
Long continued talking away from the microphone and Martin shouted, “I can talk as loud as you can without this microphone.”
. . .
At one point, after the tension eased, Long declared: “I can’t vent my anger as governor. I’m governor. I can’t make a jackass out of myself or I will make a jackass out of the people who voted for me.”
Long ended up getting his way. The legislature approved a bill creating a Board for Voting Machines, which appointed a State Custodian of Voting Machines to serve as a day-to-day administrator. Though the Secretary of State was a member of the Board, he would no longer serve as ex officio Custodian.
In the years after Martin was removed as Custodian, he repeatedly attempted to assert his influence on the Board. He was repeatedly at odds with James McLemore, the first appointed State Custodian, over how he did his job, resulting in McLemore’s resignation in 1958. And in the 1958 legislative session, Martin attempted to regain his responsibilities as Custodian by pushing legislation to repeal the 1956 law.
In response to Martin’s complaints about election administration, Long replied, “Aw, that fellow is just trying to get a little publicity again.” But Long didn’t just criticize Martin—he also began pushing his own bill to reduce the Board’s powers and instead provide for an elected State Custodian of Voting Machines. The dueling approaches pushed by Martin and Long resulted in a showdown that Long won. His bill, converting the appointed Custodian into an elected office, ended up passing, and the state’s first Custodian was elected at the 1960 election.
At the same time, Long won the battle to strip Martin of his duties as insurance commissioner. In 1956, the legislature created a separate Commissioner of Insurance. The office was to be gubernatorially elected until 1960, when the state would hold its next statewide elections and a new Commissioner would be elected.
Long also moved to freeze these changes—and the limitations on Martin’s duties—into the constitution. In 1958, the legislature, at Long’s request, proposed a constitutional amendment that added the Commissioner of Insurance to the list of elected constitutional officers, but voters rejected the measure, 44-56%, in November 1958. In 1960, the legislature tried again, and the measure was ratified, 55-45%.
It also took two tries for the Custodian to be added to the constitution. As voters ratified the Insurance Commissioner amendment in 1960, they simultaneously rejected an identical measure to add the Custodian of Voting Machines to the constitution. But in 1962, they handily ratified that measure, too, 59-41%.
Much of this change was, as it turned out, just a short-term fix. The Louisiana Constitution, in place since 1921, had grown bloated with extremely specific policy provisions after decades—and hundreds—of amendments. The legislature convened a constitutional convention in 1973, which proposed a new (and significantly streamlined) constitution to voters in 1974. The Insurance Commissioner remained as a constitutional office, but the 1974 Constitution created an elected Commissioner of Elections, who functionally served as the Custodian’s successor. The new constitution also allowed the legislature to provide for the appointment of the Commissioner of Insurance and the Commissioner of Elections. While the legislature hasn’t moved to remove the Insurance Commissioner from the ballot, in 2001, it removed the Elections Commissioner.
In the end, Louisianans elected a Custodian of Voting Machines at just four elections: 1960, 1964, 1968, and 1972. But the office’s creation reflected the extent to which the basic organization of government—which positions exist, appear on the ballot, and what powers they have—has been altered by petty feuds.
I see a straight line between Long’s inexplicable decision to take the custodianship of voting machines and place them in the hands of an elected official and the debates over election administration in Louisiana today. Long’s move transformed what should have been nonpartisan, technocratic administration of state elections vis-à-vis voting machines into a partisan elected position—and all because he didn’t like the Secretary of State! Likewise, the Louisiana legislature, by proposing a constitutional amendment to ban private donations to election administrators—in a state with aging election infrastructure—is kneecapping the effective administration of elections to accommodate conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
Elections deserve competent, well-funded, nonpartisan administration. But this year, that’s probably not on the ballot in Louisiana.