Stephanie Grace: Trump’s “Big Lie” promoter gets hero’s welcome from Louisiana election panel

Retired Army Col. Phil Waldron was warmly received and granted star-witness status at last week’s meeting of Louisiana Voting System Commission, which is tasked with choosing new voting machines to replace the state’s badly outdated ones.

He probably won’t get that sort of reception from the next government panel he faces.

Waldron has been now subpoenaed to provide documents and sit for a deposition by the U.S. House committee investigating the factors leading to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Although the subpoena came later in the week, his involvement in Donald Trump’s effort to deprive Joe Biden of his legitimate, endlessly verified victory was already public when Waldron testified about election “integrity” in Baton Rouge Tuesday.

The man that Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin turned to for about 90 minutes of expert advice, it turns out, worked closely with the Trump legal team that was looking for ways to have Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence overrule the voters’ will in key swing states.

Waldron circulated an instantly infamous PowerPoint presentation, a version of which Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows turned over to the committee before he stopped cooperating, that outlined various ideas to reverse the election’s result. He also met with Meadows repeatedly, he told The Washington Post, and briefed members of Congress.

The PowerPoint featured one plan for Pence to reject electors from the “states where fraud occurred,” even though multiple courts found no evidence of irregularities that would have changed any of the state results. It also suggested declaring a national emergency and having U.S. Marshals and National Guard troops “secure” paper ballots in key states, according to the Post.

“Mr. Waldron reportedly played a role in promoting claims of election fraud and circulating potential strategies for challenging results of the 2020 election,” according to U.S. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., the 1/6 committee’s chairman. “He was also apparently in communication with officials in the Trump White House and in Congress discussing his theories in the weeks leading up to the January 6th attack. The document he reportedly provided to Administration officials and Members of Congress is an alarming blueprint for overturning a nationwide election.”

But sure, let’s ask this guy for advice about how Louisiana should run its elections, and how — in his words — the state can ensure that all voters can be confident that their votes count exactly as cast, and that “we truly are a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

With news reports having already outlined Waldron’s attempt to subvert those things for the presidential election before the Louisiana hearing, you’d think the subject might have come up. Nope.

Ardoin, a Republican who has struggled to appease conspiracy-minded fellow partisans while running clean elections, welcomed Waldron warmly and noted that he had a “fan club” in the room (an aide later told NBC News that the invitation to speak had been issued upon the request of “a group of citizens”). When it was her turn to ask questions, state Sen. Sharon Hewitt, R-Slidell, who chairs the committee that oversees elections, said the two had spoken “many times” and that she loves the “fresh ideas” he brings to the table.

So about those ideas. In wide-ranging testimony, Waldron said his overall interest in the subject of ballot vulnerability stemmed from concerns over Black Lives Matter and Antifa, not over worry about any effort to seize the election led from the White House itself. He claimed Louisiana’s system is vulnerable to fake votes and fake counts and suggested some sort of manual verification of votes, which several Republicans on the panel questioned, citing the difficulty of implementing. Ardoin also pointed out, correctly, that any system that takes too long to provide results might undermine confidence rather than enhance it.

The irony here is that the voting machines Louisiana needs to replace are old, but the secretary of state’s office has a historically strong track record of running elections. While he sometimes indulges proponents of the Big Lie that the presidential election was stolen, a neutral observer might even conclude that Ardoin’s been a pretty good defender of election integrity.

If he wants to keep it that way, he really should send Waldron and his ilk packing, for good.

*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from NOLA.com can be found here ***