Louisiana Secretary of State "Human Error" During Database Maintenance Switches ~67,000 Voters to Inactive Status; Office Says All Restored, Eligibility Unaffected

What is documented. On the night of Monday 2026-10-05 (error date; the articles say “Monday night”), routine database maintenance at the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office switched approximately 67,000 registered voters statewide to inactive status. Deputy Secretary of State for communications and policy Trey Williams attributed it to “human error” and said it did not affect eligibility: inactive voters in Louisiana may still vote, confirming residence with photo ID and proof of address.

How it surfaced. The Louisiana Illuminator reported that an East Baton Rouge Parish voter (named by the outlet; not named here) saw her status as inactive on Monday evening and called her registrar, who told her the problem “originated with the Secretary of State.” (Report date 2026-10-07; republished 2026-10-08.)

Restoration: reports differ on timing. The Illuminator (published Wednesday 2026-10-07) said the office expected to restore correct statuses “by Wednesday.” The Center Square (report date 2026-10-11) quotes Williams that the office “corrected the error later that day.” The articles do not say which day “that day” is. The “restored within two days” framing is therefore supported only as an upper bound.

Not established in any fetched source. The specific maintenance action; any vendor or federal data source (no SAVE/DHS linkage appears in any source; none should be assumed); how or whether affected voters were notified; parish-level counts (Williams: “We do not have a parish-by-parish breakdown”); duration of the inactive flag; what the new “internal safeguards” are. No lawsuit, advocacy-group letter, or legislator response was found in a web search on 2026-10-16.

Source-tier note: both outlets are secondary reports of the SOS office’s emailed statements. The SOS inactive-voters page (sos.la.gov/elections-voting/inactive-voters) carries no statement about the incident as of 2026-10-16. The Illuminator original returned 403 to the fetcher; the republished copy was read.