Baton Rouge, Louisiana (Associated Press)-Louisiana made progress on Wednesday in its latest effort to update the state’s voting system and convened a new committee, which will be received before officials After failing to successfully replace the more extensive investment made before, he helped to choose thousands of old voting machines with technology.

No matter which voting system you choose, you must generate auditable paper records, which is different from the decades-old machines currently in use. Legislators, mainly Republicans, set new requirements for procurement and set up a voting system committee to make recommendations before the bidding starts.

The 13-member committee includes legislators, election experts, cybersecurity experts, and others who will analyze the types of voting systems that should be purchased or leased. Kyle Ardoin, the state’s chief election official and Republican Secretary of State, was elected chairman.

The group should propose its voting system by January 31st. After that, Ardoin's office can start a search for its latest voting system through an open tender process. Two recent attempts by the Secretary of State’s Office to replace the state’s 10,000 voting machines fell through due to disputes over bidding.

A bill initiated by Senate Republican leader Sharon Hewitt and approved by the majority Republican legislature created the committee and added new requirements for the next voting system in Louisiana, including new legislative oversight and technical analysis And public comment. Hewitt said on Wednesday that the group will "give citizens, experts and legislators an equal voice" and help them choose a "safe paper voting system that gives voters confidence" that their votes are accurately counted.

The first meeting mainly reviewed the current system used by the Ardoin office across the state and the requirements for running elections.

The committee can only recommend voting systems with auditable written records. This may involve a ballot digital machine that prints out a paper receipt, a paper ballot scanned into a digital system, or some other machine-based method of producing paper records. Currently, the only written record that exists in the Louisiana election involves absentee ballots.

Ardoin's office stated that the agency will increase paper and storage costs and will require legislators to consider creating a larger gap between the primary and final elections in order to conduct audits.

The legislation also requires that the next voting system in Louisiana cannot be connected to the Internet, which is a common practice in today's office of the Secretary of State.

There are no controversies in Louisiana’s recent elections, including the 2020 presidential election. Former President Donald Trump won Louisiana, and Addo strongly defended Louisiana's voting system is safe.

Despite this, the effort to replace the old voting machine has raised concerns among some Republicans, who have repeatedly repeated unfounded accusations of widespread fraud in other states and expressed their concern that the new voting system in Louisiana may be hacked.

Several people who testified before the committee on Wednesday said they did not want the state to obtain digital voting marking devices, which suggests that these devices may be unsafe. They urged the state to buy hand-marked paper ballots and then scan them. Some have pushed the state to use multiple voting system vendors.

After facing widespread complaints from election technology companies, Hewitt, and other Republicans about the search process, Ardoin shelved the last attempt to replace the voting machine in March. Due to suspected bid rigging, previous searches and contract awards in 2018 were invalid.

While waiting to start the search for the new voting system, Ardoin's office continues to pay its current supplier, Dominion Voting Systems, to maintain the old election day machines and rent early voting machines.

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