thereductbox.com LA Blog Wire

Lege titles or leaders?

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 12:00:33 +0000

Reporter Tyler Bridges writes about a quiet campaign that is going on among the members of the La. House of Representatives for Speaker of the House. While it may appear insignificant to the public, it is distracting from addressing the serious issues facing the state. See story here.

Unlike nobility, titles are not required to lead in politics. Leadership is not about having a big office, a prominent parking spot, lots of staff, having lunch at the Mansion, campaign contributions, tax-payer funded junkets, the next political office and people kissing your ass.

True leaders usually emerge out of necessity. Currently, there is a vacuum of leadership in the Lege and Executive Branch.

Bobby Jindal was elected governor twice, but he has been no leader. Speaker Chuck Kleckley has held the title of Speaker, but he was no leader. Neither is Senate President John Alario. If they were truly leaders, they would have resolved the problems that have plagued the state for eight years.

Instead of running around the state making deals for committee assignments, etc., to gain the title of Speaker, a true leader would use the next three months to develop a plan and the votes to address the chronic fiscal problems facing a state for the last 8 years.

A true leader would be meeting with like-minded members of leges (House and Senate), the lege staff and other experts to develop a plan to fix the state’s chronic fiscal problems.

Perhaps that person might emerge with the title of Speaker, but it would be incidental to their work, not the goal.

We don’t need leges with titles we need leges who are leaders.

C.B.

The past is prologue

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 12:00:45 +0000

Same old same old

Traditionally, around this time of year every four years those who pay attention to state government begin to think optimistically about the positive changes that will come with the election of a new governor and new legislators.

This year, I don’t find any optimism among the public or the public officials. The public has been down this road so often all they see is the lean hogs moving the fat hogs away from the trough.

Where’s the beef?

As to those running for public office, they are doing a good job of regurgitating the state’s problems and telling us what’s wrong with their opponents. None have offered any specifics that even come close to being realistic solutions. They are simply pandering.

Everything the pols want to accomplish requires more money in spite of a structural deficit of nearly $2 Billion which is conveniently omitted from their ads.

Lege focus

Each time I discuss a tough budget issue with a reelected incumbent lege, they try very hard not laugh in my face, but they make it clear my suggestions are not “politically-doable.” That’s political-speak for we don’t have the courage.

Currently, the focus of the newly-elected House members is on who will be the next Speaker and what committee assignments they will get if they support the winner. That focus will preoccupy them until January 11, 2016, when they are sworn-in and select their officers.

It is a foregone conclusion that Sen. John Alario will be the senate prez. No change there. The rest of the elected senators’ rationalize doing nothing is that all the legislation to resolve the fiscal problems must originate in the House so they will react when they see it. That’s not leadership.

A fractured House

To make matters worse, the Democrat and Republican leges are divided among themselves into factions. I’m informed there are three factions among the Black Caucus and up to 5 factions among the Republican Caucus (Sounds like D.C.?). None of the divisions are about issues, but about personalities.

Other factors

The private sector business groups claiming to have plans for the state’s budget problems can’t get past platitudes. Why? Because once the details are put on the table they dissolve into more factions than the House.

Other more highly-focused special interest groups are only focused on their single issue and don’t give a damn how getting what they want impacts the overall state problems.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, regardless of who is our next governor, with most of the incumbent leges returning, the political courage and leadership necessary to actually fix the fiscal problems is not there.

Now, take your best shot at this messenger.

C.B.

Education issues figure prominently in NW LA races

Jeff Sadow — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 09:35:00 +0000

Education issues will play a big part in at least a couple of contests this fall in northwest Louisiana, according to campaign rhetoric that voters must consider carefully.

Obviously these will in the race for District 4 of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. This one features three Republicans: the appointed incumbent principal Mary Harris, challenger teacher Glynnis Johnston, and challenger businessman Tony Davis.

Whether to support reforms implemented in the past few years to Louisiana’ historically worst-in-the-nation educational system has created a fault line across the state in BESE competitions. These changes for the first time demand meaningful accountability out of schools and teachers, through the use of valid and more objective performance measurements and in increased parental schooling choices for their children. As such, these have become bitterly resisted by teacher unions and teachers unwilling or unable to raise their levels of performance, by administrators and school board members whose jobs and reelections are threatened, and by ideologue policy-makers who prefer government command and control that places the desires of adults over the needs of children.

This noxious combination has organized itself into a special interest called “Flip BESE.” But besides trying to weaken accountability standards and to reduce educational choice, its endorsees cleverly oppose the Common Core State Standards Initiatives. Typically, Republicans and conservatives have favored these school reforms, but many also see Common Core as problematic. By emphasizing their Common Core opposition above all, they seek to obscure their reactionary agenda and thereby trick voters into supporting them who otherwise would not.

Harris got the Flip BESE endorsement and, while she touts herself as “strong conservative” and “lifelong Republican,” appears against sensible accountability measures with her euphemistic use of “overtesting” as something to fight against and employs another catchphrase common to the Flip BESE crowd as a believer in “local control” of schools – that is, forswearing BESE’s power to charter schools, practically meaning eliminating charter schools as few are chartered at local levels because districts don’t want to lose power over and the money directed to schools that get chartered. She opposes Common Core.

So does Johnston, who additionally opposes the idea that teachers should be evaluated on the basis of how well they help students progress, falling back on the traditional, if not derogatory, excuse that demographic aspects of students make some inherently unable to learn adequately – a reprehensible notion contradicted by research into the performance of charter schools and voucher students.

Davis, who as a business leader in Natchitoches has been involved heavily in educational matters, entered the race at the last minute presumably as an alternative to the reactionary and anti-Common Core agendas of Harris and Johnston. He has done little campaigning and it is unclear what his views are on pertinent education issues.

Education also has emerged as an issue in the contest to succeed outgoing state Sen. Robert Adley. State Rep. Henry Burns, lawyer Ryan Gatti, and businessman Todd Hollenshead. Although possibly Republicans Burns and Gatti could face each other in the general election runoff, probably only one will finish better than third to tangle with the Democrat Hollenshead.

Gatti in his television ads alludes to putting education decisions “back in the hands of teachers” – a velied attack on accountability reforms. He reiterates that on radio and that ad also refers to Burns’ being against anti-bullying legislation. That bill is not made clear but Burns did vote in favor of Act 861 of 2012, which instituted effective anti-bullying measures in schools.

Even as Gatti asserts that he is a “true conservative” on this and other issues, trying to draw a distinction with Burns who voted for around $500 million in tax increases this year, problematic for him if elected to act as one would be if his good friend state Rep. John Bel Edwards were to win the governor’s race. The liberal Democrat, for whom Gatti held a rally and to whom he gave $1,000 in 2014and $2,000 more in 2015, is not expected to triumph, but were he to it’s questionable whether Gatti would vote as a conservative on education, where Edwards generally echoes the Flip BESE preferences, or on other issues where Edwards chooses to use his relationships and other tools of the office at his disposal to get legislators to back his liberal preferences.

Voters need to gather full information about these candidates and to understand the code they use in order not to be misled when making their choices.

Government Budgeting for Dummies — Part 1

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 12:00:10 +0000

Assigned reading for leges

In the late 70s, I worked for the Louisiana House Appropriations Committee. One year Dr. Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones, then-president of Grambling University, came before the committee to present his budget.

“Prez” as he was affectionately known to everyone handed out his budget for discussion. Immediately, the committee members recognized that the difference between proposed expenditures and expected revenues showed a deficit of several hundred thousand dollars.

Prez” just smiled. He said you asked me to present a budget necessary for operating Grambling. He also knew the reality of being able to get the necessary funds were highly unlikely. Rarely, did the lege give any state agency the amount of money they requested because they were known to be inflated.

Budgeting was a game played with the leges. The agency head usually overestimated their budget needs by 20%, knowing it would be cut by 10% which was still 5% more than they needed.

After the agencies received their extra 5% (with no explanation requires, merely rationale) they immediately begin a public relations campaign saying their budget had been cut. While their inflated budget request was cut. In reality, they got a 5% increase over the previous year.

This game allowed the leges to tell their constituents they were being fiscally-responsible with our tax dollars. Nevertheless, the state budget grew annually and public services grew worse (i.e. highways, bridges, driver’s licenses, etc.). This process is called “incremental budgeting” for which there is no benefit to the citizens.

If this type of game was played in the private sector, the department head would be summarily fired.

By telling the truth, “Prez” left the committee with the money he “needed” to run Grambling. Of course, in those days, higher education was a true priority and not merely bait to raise taxes. Today, there’s not a single Louisiana college president worthy of carrying “Prez’s” briefcase.

More of the budget game later.

C.B.

Questionable poll illustrates left's fear of Vitter

Jeff Sadow — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 10:05:00 +0000

Mass-production pollster Public Policy Polling, which works for Democrats and leftist causes, recently put out a poll that showed in hypothetical runoffs with Republicans major Democrat gubernatorial candidate state Rep. John Bel Edwards hanging in there and, in the case of frontrunner Sen. David Vitter, decisively defeating him. Is this believable?

Probably not, for a number of reasons, one of these being the quality of PPP surveys regarding state-level elections. PPP produces a high number of these by using less-rigorous methodology that serves to lower cost. As a result, their products often are all over the map, sometimes pretty accurate and sometimes wildly off, with the latter represented by its final effort in last year’s Senate contest that significantly over-predicted support for former Sen. Mary Landrieu. In fact, the 2014 cycle produced a great amount of inconsistency for it. As such, of the 21outfits that have produced at least such 50 polls since 1998, it ranks in about the middle for accuracy.

Further, it seems that its recent trend towards increased chances of less accuracy has occurred as it practices fiddling with sampling frames to fit a preconceived notion of the electorate that leans in the direction of favoring Democrat candidates in these contests. Finally, keep in mind that this effort came at the behest of the political action committee set up expressly to defeat Vitter and is run by the guy who was formerly the head administrator of Louisiana’s Democrats and the campaign manager of Vitter’s vanquished main 2010 Senate challenger.

All in all, this has led to skepticism about these results even from a frequent user of PPP, the Angry Left web site Daily Kos. It sensibly notes the unreliability of the runoff matchup numbers, in that Edwards has gotten free ride while the Republicans all have attacked each other – perhaps indicative by Edwards having the highest favorability/unfavorability numbers. The large number of undecided voters found in it at this stage of the race also raises doubts about the sample quality (perhaps influenced by a relatively smaller sample size), where its automated system is less likely to get people in a household who are registered voters or who really intend to vote (95 percent insisted they “definitely” will vote) and forces them to choose only from among the top four candidates or for undecided also attracts a less-representative sample.

And there is a time-bound, hypothetical quality to it all: of Edwards secures a place in the runoff, his liberal record specifically and tying him to national Democrats generally publicized by his opponent will turn around favorability numbers in a hurry. Is it credible that in a sample that claimed 55 percent of it voted for the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 that Vitter is so loathed that so many who would vote for a Republican in the general election would abandon Vitter for a Democrat in the runoff? Nor does the poll jive with the others most recently, both in terms of sample and in results.

Note now that three distinct sets of polling have emerged for this contest. Most show Vitter and Edwards at least about 15-20 points ahead of everybody else, but those coming from a particular pollster give Vitter less support and more to Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelleso that he rivals Vitter, and now comes this one showing Edwards beating Vitter in a runoff and doing well against Angelle and the other main Republican Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne when no others show those results. The electorate is not that volatile; some of these results simply are not accurate.

That doesn’t mean the PPP one must be inaccurate, but it does mean that it’s likely that it is. Confirming this is a media poll released earlier this week that does show a competitive race in an Edwards-Vitter runoff, giving the Democrat a lead within the margin of error, not 12 points as the PPP poll asserts. Thus, it probably was fashioned as a relevancy exercise on behalf of Democrats to keep the troops from getting too discouraged in state elections this year by creating a hypothetical path to victory for Edwards.

But it also falls within the context that the political left always indicates who it fears the most. This may be a strategy to push Republican voters into the Dardenne and Angelle camps by making them think that Vitter is unelectable, because liberal elites can live with those guys in office – even as they contradictorily assume that fear of a Democrat elected will drive GOP supporters away from Vitter in the general election, but not in the runoff. However, liberals know Vitter will give their policies no quarter if elected governor, and they desperately wish to avoid that. Thus, as in the case of this poll, desperate people do desperate things.

No more excuses

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 12:00:29 +0000

Lege just sent us another bill

Last week we learned that the State Budget for the fiscal year that ended on June 30 has a deficit of somewhere between $50 Million and $100 Million or possibly more.

Just as day follows night, the Jindal Administration refused accept any responsibility for the problem. According to the story in the Associated Press, it’s our fault. Or at least the fault of those who took advantage of tax credits that were made available to them by the Lege.

This is not to defend those credits or any credits. If we had a business-friendly tax code, there would be no need for special exemptions, credits, offsets, rebates or whatever.

My point is that going into the 8^th year of budgets by the Jindal Administration; they haven’t learned a damn thing about preparing budgets or at least haven’t learned to be candid with the public.

Common sense or lottery

Even those of us on fixed incomes or living paycheck-to-paycheck have learned there will always be unexpected expenses and unexpected declines in revenues. Those who can afford to (the state certainly can) wisely don’t budget to spend every dime they expect to receive. It’s just common sense.

Those who don’t or can’t budget wisely are the ones who play the lottery every week hoping to win enough to pay their bills. The state is no different, except that the state is not allowed to play the lottery, but the thought process is the same.

The state, on the other hand, annually budgets for things like sales of property for which there is not even an offer; revenues from litigation that is still on appeal, etc. That’s no different than playing the lottery, except we know someone will eventually win the lottery.

Fool’s gold

When the above budget gimmicks don’t work, Team Jindal and the leges resort to amorphous “efficiencies” (a.k.a. as “Fools Gold.”) usually in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The best part about the “Fools Gold” it is not possible for the lege fiscal staffs or the Revenue Estimating Conference to determine if the efficiencies have been put into effect and, if they are, how much they are saving.

Just as likely, it was the failure of those efficiencies to be implemented as the film or other credits that caused the deficit in last year’s budget.

In the current year’s budget (began July 1), the leges knowingly omitted over $300 Million in known healthcare mandates. In other words, when the leges voted on the budget, they voted on an unconstitutionally-balanced, budget that guaranteed a deficit and mid-year cuts.

Responsibility/accountability

All of the above gimmicks are known to the Jindal Administration and the leges. At least a majority of the leges voted for them.

If your lege tells you they didn’t know about the gimmicks, ask if they voted to approve the budget. If they did, it’s their fault for not reading and paying attention. Nobody else is to blame and certainly not us taxpayers. Here’s the links to the votes on the current Operating Budget: House and Senate

The point is, the leges needed to stop trying to deceive the public into believing the state chronic fiscal problems are caused by anything other than their mismanagement of the budget. It’s malfeasance.

It’s time for us to stop listening to excuses and start holding the leges accountable. It is insulting to our intelligence.

NO MORE EXCUSES!

C.B.

Barring felons as candidates improves governance

Jeff Sadow — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 12:00:00 +0000

It’s possible that Prisoner #30609-034 will skate his way onto a ballot this fall, but whether he does he and those like him in the future should not have this chance that degrades the quality of governance in Louisiana.

Better known as former state Sen. Derrick Shepherd, he recently exited the slammer after having served felony time for corruption in office. However, despite the Constitution making him ineligible to run for state office for 15 years after finishing his sentence without a pardon from the appropriate official, he signed up to run for his old House seat. A series of court maneuvers then ensued trying to throw him off the ballot or him trying to stay on it, based upon the Constitution’s provision.

These have come on two tracks, one weighing his status on how he thinks he should qualify within the provision, and the other on the constitutionality of the provision itself, where plaintiffs claimed the actual legislative instrument got lost in translation on the way to the ballot language to amend it into the document, which should nullify the successfully amended-in passage. The Louisiana Supreme Court is expected to rule on both questions in the near future.

My Advocate colleague James Gill has done a credible analysis on the specifics of the cases and concludes that Shepherd does not seem likely to prevail on either pathway. Yet he bemoans that outcome, arguing that the electoral marketplace should determine the fates of felonious candidates. Even if felons are running, Gill maintains that voters should have the final say on whether that recent and/or unredeemed criminal history disqualifies that candidate, not the Constitution.

But this view overlooks an important aspect to the constitutional prohibition as it stands, paralleled in the debate in years past over whether to deny certain retirement benefits to public servants who engage in corrupt activities as part of their jobs. Simply, as in the case of that state law that eventually passed into effect a couple of years ago, as it pertains to some of these benefits an official’s knowledge that committing a felony disqualifies from these serves as a disincentive to act corruptly in the first place.

Human nature of this kind also applies in the case of disqualification from holding state or local elected office. If a politician with progressive ambition knows that a career in politics essentially disappears if ever caught and convicted of a felony, of any kind, then that should discourage behavior that is felonious. While this includes activities outside of the performance of official duties, the official knowing the risk becomes less likely to take it in performance of his job, producing a higher quality of governance.

While the intent of many concerning this part of the Constitution may have focused more on preventing people that at one point in life showed defective character from becoming their governors, its deterrent effect is more relevant to justifying its existence. If the Supreme Court does strike down this passage, this should be restored in a constitutional manner as soon as possible.

The Advocate column, Sep. 27, 2015

Jeff Sadow — Sun, 27 Sep 2015 08:10:00 +0000

David Vitter’s past is unlikely to hamper candidacy for Louisiana governor

http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/13533138-123/jeff-sadow-david-vitters-past

CABL's shoddy analysis pushes sick tax onto people

Jeff Sadow — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 12:00:00 +0000

Usually, the Council for a Better Louisiana makes solid policy recommendations. But sometimes it comes up with a clunker when the prejudices of the organization’s members come to the forefront, and such is the case with an item in its 2015 Election Agenda.

Among the various salutary ideas in this appears a real stinker, that in early 2016 the state should opt to institute a “sick tax” on users of health care in most state hospitals. A one percent assessment on these institutions’ net patient revenues (in most cases) will get passed along to consumers, causing rises not only in health care premiums they pay but also in taxes to support health care insurance made available to state employees.

This taking more of what people earn seems not to trouble CABL, which advocates for the trigger to be pulled that would have to happen prior to the end of the first quarter of 2016 by assent of the new governor and by the newly-constituted Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget. Instead, it justifies this new intrusion on liberty by painting a picture of financial desperation.

While admitting that the costs to Louisiana would be great – had expansion begun in fiscal year 2014, it would have cost the state $2.08 billion extra through 2023, and actually would be higher if starting in FY 2017 through 2023 because of the cost-sharing formula that front-weighs federal participation – CABL asserted that these costs would be offset by the sick tax and because disproportionate share hospital payments would decline, DSH payments being extra payments by the federal government for care of the uninsured. Because of its historical tendency to provide free care to the indigent not enrolled in Medicaid or any other insurer in state-owned hsopitals, Louisiana receives relatively high DSH payments, ranking fourth in absolute terms among the states.

Yet that claim ignores both financial and political reality. As Louisiana received in 2014 $732 million in DSH payments and from 2017 to 2024 these payments nationally are presently scheduled to be cut in half, this implies a loss of $366 million a year. CABL assumes the state would pay a 40 percent match on this, meaning a loss of $220 million in federal assistance annually. But the state’s estimate of DSH payment reductions is far lower, only about $310 million in the entire period. CABL provides no figures explaining why DSH revenues reductions would be so crippling.

Perhaps because they know they may never come. The DSH payment drawdown was supposed to begin in 2014 but Congress kicked back the date to 2017, not only because the 22 states that have not expanded Medicaid would have been hurt (pardon the pun) disproportionately by a DSH cut, but also because even in those states that did expand safety-net providers complained that such reductions – surprise, surprise, given that costs have been underestimated consistently and participation rates over estimated – would put them in the red. And this deferral probably will happen again, and again. Chances are when all is said and done DSH payment cuts either will be much less than originally scheduled, or never will happen. Yet CABL completely discounts a scenario already proven likely.

It also whiffs completely on the underlying reason why DSH payments have such a significant impact in Louisiana – because the state insists on retaining a hybrid safety net indigent care system, where the state own nine hospitals and contracts out eight of them for operation. While CABL pitches the expansion idea to assist the operators of these hospitals, it seems blissfully unaware that financial problems operators may be having stem from this unwieldy, inefficient model in the first place. To solve for it, Louisiana simply should do what every other state does – get out of the business of direct provision of health care by selling its state-owned hospitals – and this concern evaporates, instead of foisting cost increases onto the people.

Missing these obvious aspects begs the question of why, then, did CABL overlook them? In all likelihood, it boils down to who runs it. The group has membership – for nonstudents starting at $100 a year – open to anybody, but packaged to induce corporate support. Among them, as indicated by its officers and board of directors, are a healthy smattering of health care providers, administrators, and ancillary firms with a vested interest in expansion.

In the mad rush to inject government direction into health care, only two winners have emerged: those who receive heavily-subsidized health care that ends up discouraging their work contribution to society and health care providers, who now have a huge chunk of taxpayer dollars redirected their way. It’s not hard to connect the dots to understand why certain interests inside CABL would stump for Medicaid expansion.

But having a pecuniary agenda does not substitute for good policy analysis. By shilling for Medicaid expansion, in CABL asking the people to pay more to get less, regrettably it violates its stated missionof “improving the quality of life for all citizens of Louisiana.”

SOS challenger's agenda degrades elections

Jeff Sadow — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 12:25:00 +0000

Defined more by candidate image in 2011, the 2015 contest for Louisiana’s Secretary of State finds itself notable for publicizing issues that would promote detrimental change to the state’s democratic health.

Current Republican Sec. of State Tom Schedlerlooks to keep the job after scraping by four years ago. Then, he faced outgoing House Speaker Jim Tucker, whose position gave the term-limited legislator extensive political capital and produced the most competitive race of that cycle. This time, none of his opponents have quite the resources Tucker brought to the challenge, but Schedler’s main competitor relies upon hawking a change in voter registration laws to convince the electorate to replace him.

Law professor Chris Tyson, a Democrat from a politically-connected family and environment who worked for former Sen. Mary Landrieu, criticizes Schedler mainly on two counts. First, he alleges that Schedler wastes funds on a lawsuit brought by the federal government, now four years in the running. Also, he argues that Louisiana ought to adopt same day voter registration, saying it would boost turnout as opposed to the current 30-day residency period required, claiming the state has high registration levels but relatively low turnout. He asserts that Schedler has resisted this change out of concerns of fraud Tyson dismisses.

Yet Tyson seems entirely unaware of the inconsistency attached to his two central claims. In the case of the suit, which he says Schedler should just settle as other states have, the Pres. Barack Obama Administration had launched an ideological crusade to bully states into registering more voters through threats and intimidation like the suit. The strategy is built on the supposition that constituencies favorable to Democrats disproportionately do not register to vote, and that the state should spend more time and money to push registration to this population, courtesy of a federal law that mandates that state agencies that largely deal with the public provide registration opportunities.

Schedler, in defending agianst the federal Department of Justice, rightly notes there is no causal connection showing the state deliberately obstructs the process and would rather fight the injustice of the request instead of caving in as Tyson suggests. Although Tyson’s expertise lies in property law, not election law, it’s not commendable as a model to the future lawyers he teaches to advocate settling in court instead of resisting government when it is wrong.

And, this position where he agrees that the state registers too few people is distinctly at odds with his claim that he state registers enough but too few vote, the basis of his argument for same day registration. His cavalier view that this change, which in the dozen or so states that practice it typically entails registering at the polling place often but not always involving a government identification card such as a driver’s license, poses no threat to election integrity is shockingly ignorant.

The sad fact is these election irregularities are far more common than widely known, with same day registration providing a convenient gateway to foster fraud that led to an estimated over 6 percent of ballots fraudulently cast by noncitizens in 2008 and over 2 percent in 2010. State laws which allow for some time between registration and election get removed with being able to do both on the same day, creating avenues for corrupting elections.

For example, while not easy, Louisiana’s laws make it possible for illegal registration. Louisiana law does not unambiguously require government-issued identification to be able to vote, nor does registration. Were these to be tightened, such as in needing unambiguous presentation of government-issued identification, that still is not an insurmountable hurdle to overcome. For example, the right combination of secondary documents, none of which would disqualify aliens, scores a driver’s license in Louisiana. Perhaps even more easily, the process of obtaining one by holding a valid license from another state requires no citizenship check, which includes licenses from the several states that do not check for citizenship from their applicants.

Tyson seems blissfully unaware of these possibilities, so at best his views on this subject are negligent. Nor does he even understand that this is a solution in search of a problem; when he supposes that Louisiana’s voting rates are too low, that indicates he is not informed on research on voting participation that shows, when holding constant the factors affecting voting turnout, that Louisiana actually has one of the highest turnout rates among the states.

This overall cluelessness disqualifies him from serious consideration for the job, as he conducts a campaign apparently long on ideology but short on facts. Still, to pretend to remain a significant force in statewide politics, Louisiana Democrats need to compete wherever possible, and it appears Tyson drew the straw here.

Even one fraudulent ballot can corrupt an entire election, and government must maximize efforts to ensure total honesty in elections. In the case of Tyson, voters should look elsewhere for a candidate for this office that does not so indifferently understands its role in maintaining elections integrity.