Secretary of State Nancy Landry said in a news release that Louisiana's participation in the agreement reflects how seriously she takes the responsibility of ensuring the accuracy of voter rolls.
Under the memorandum of understanding, which was signed last week, the two states will share personally identifiable voter registration information in an effort to identify instances where a voter may be registered in two states or may be attempting to double vote, said Joel Watson, a spokesperson for the Secretary of State's office.
Louisiana is also finalizing plans for voter registration data sharing agreements with other states, which will be announced before the November election, Watson said.
With respect to Louisiana-Alabama voter data transmission, Watson said "very important, painstaking security measures" are used to ensure data is kept safe and secure, though he declined to share greater detail due to "security concerns."
Five other states — Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee — have entered into voter registration data sharing agreements with Alabama, according to the Alabama Secretary of State's website.
"Louisiana is the sixth state to partner with Alabama as part of the Alabama Voter Integrity Database (AVID)," a news release from Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen said. "AVID was developed by Secretary Allen and his team as the Alabama-based replacement for the private third-party group, the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC)."
The announcement comes almost three years after former Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin ended participation in ERIC, a bipartisan, non-profit membership organization formed in 2012 to help member states keep voter rolls accurate through "state-of-the-art data matching technology," a data-sharing program and a commitment to cooperation, according to the ERIC website.
Ardoin in a 2022 announcement attributed the decision to leave ERIC in part to concerns that "possibly partisan actors may have access to ERIC network data for political purposes, potentially undermining voter confidence."
Landry at the time worked directly under Ardoin as first assistant secretary of state.
Since 2022, nine Republican-led states have terminated their ERIC membership.
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