Lisa Manning Bridges will be the next registrar of voters in Orleans Parish, following a unanimous City Council vote on Thursday.
The registrar of voters maintains Orleans Parish voter rolls, administers early and absentee ballots and conducts voter education outreach. Bridges, the First City Court chief deputy clerk who also serves on the Orleans Parish Board of Elections Supervisors, will replace Sandra Wilson, who retired in January after nearly two decades on the job.
Bridges said one of her first priorities is to ensure absentee voters understand what they must include with their mailed ballots. Specifically, she said many do not realize that affidavits concerning their identities must include a witness signature, and that the affidavit must include the voter’s mother’s maiden name.
Bridges said the elections board had to disqualify about 300 absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election because of missing information.
“The duty to safeguard the democratic process, to ensure that every citizen is informed and that every citizen has the right to engage in the election process is my first and paramount responsibility, and it’s a duty that I hold as a sacred trust,” Bridges said on Thursday before the vote.
Bridges, a New Orleans native, said she has always been passionate about elections and civic participation, pointing to her grandmother’s involvement in bus boycotts and other civil rights activism as an early influence.
“It was just instilled in me to work with elections in some kind of way,” Bridges said.
Although appointed by the council, the registrar is technically a state employee whose salary is evenly split between the city and state. Bridges declined to say what her salary will be. The Times-Picayune has submitted a public records request for the information.
Council President JP Morrell, who sponsored the motion to appoint Bridges, said Bridges stood out from “a tremendous amount of qualified candidates,” who were interviewed in closed-door meetings last month.
“It is a very important job, in particular, considering this time where the right to vote seems to always be under threat,” Morrell said. “I can think of no better person who will respect the right to vote from all New Orleanians.”
