Some voters in St. Landry parish noticed a mistake on their ballot when they voted in Tuesday's elections.
According to parish officials, the issue was seen not just in St. Landry, but across Louisiana.
It caused several ballots not to show the correct candidates or amendments on their perspective ballots.
Katie Hoffman has lived on court street in Opelousas since 2017, which is within the city limits.
She noticed an error on her ballot for Tuesday's election. Hoffman says prior to voting she went to the Secretary of States website and saw she was supposed to vote on the Senators race, city officials, and casting her vote on the amendments.
However, she noticed when she got to the polls she was not able to cast her vote on any of the city officials. She then notified her election worker.
“I told her that it wasn’t right and she needed to come to look and she dismissed me and I ended up finishing the voting that I could. But left very disappointed.”
So we brought her concerns and several others around the parish with the same issue to the clerk of court's office.
“I investigated the commissioned portion of the problem and found that we instructed each commissioner individually on how to do the lockouts. And we are fairly confident that this was not a commissioner's problem at all,” Clerk of Court Charles Jagneaux said.
A lock-out, is based on a code the commissioner puts into the voting machine that allows you to vote for the precinct the voter is allowed to vote on.
However, Jagneaux says the issue came into play when the redistricting was changed multiple times.
“I don’t think it’s the secretary of states office or the elected officials fault or the Parish. I think it comes from the demographers and the redrawing of the district lines because in St. Landry Parish the redrew them three times. We started with 91 precincts and now we have 95. So that’s and issue also that we’re are going to look into,” Jagneaux said.
We spoke with parish president Jessie Bellard who says they are working with the secretary of state's office to resolve the issue.
“They need to make this right, especially in a small town like ours. Where every single vote counts. If it counts for a small town how can it count for the entire united states,” Hoffman said.
Bellard also says candidates have until Monday to file an appeal on the results of the election. He says he is unaware of any candidates who have filed an appeal yet.
We reached out to the secretary of state's office who said, "The Secretary of state's office is not aware of any irregularities in Saint Landry Parish.”
Clerk of Court Charles Jagneaux maintains the parish conducted a free and fair election. Officials also advise voters to confirm their address and information is correct with the Registrars office.
If you believe there was an error on your ballot call the clerk of court's office and they'll investigate it further.
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