BATON ROUGE — The 180-day signature-gathering period for the effort to recall Gov. Jeff Landry has reached its deadline, but as of early Sunday there was no authoritative public confirmation that organizers submitted enough valid signatures to force a statewide recall election.
The petition was filed May 4 by Baton Rouge residents Marian Gbaiwon Hills and Katilyn P. Stepter. Under Louisiana’s recall law, supporters had 180 days to collect and submit the required signatures from qualified voters.
Louisiana Secretary of State guidance says a recall involving a voting area with 100,000 or more qualified electors requires signatures from 20 percent of the qualified electors in that area. Reporting throughout the campaign placed the Landry petition’s required total at 500,884 valid signatures.
That is not the same thing as the number of signatures organizers may have collected. Signatures must be submitted to parish registrars and verified against voter records before they count toward qualification.
The campaign, operating as Louisiana Deserves Better, continued advertising signature collection and submission activity through the October 31 deadline. Its website used a higher practical target of more than 600,000 signatures, apparently allowing a cushion for signatures that could be rejected during verification.
Campaign organizers had not publicly released a reliable statewide signature total during much of the drive. That makes it impossible to conclude from public information alone that the petition succeeded or failed.
The distinction matters. A recall petition does not create an election merely because organizers collected forms or announced a large raw total. Parish registrars must determine whether signers are qualified electors and whether petition entries satisfy Louisiana law.
Secretary of State guidance explains that recall petitions must use the prescribed form and contain a clear statement of the reasons for recall. State law also establishes certification procedures once petition pages are submitted.
The Landry petition accused the governor of a pattern of actions and statements that organizers said undermined fair representation, shifted priorities away from community needs and emphasized punishment over solutions to underlying problems. Those are the petitioners’ political allegations and arguments, not findings of wrongdoing by a court or state agency.
Landry and Louisiana Republicans opposed the effort. Republican Party officials argued that the governor was carrying out the policies voters elected him to pursue and pointed to employment, crime, education and tax policies as evidence of progress.
The campaign unfolded during an unusually turbulent Louisiana political year. It began days after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the congressional map then being used by the state and Landry suspended scheduled U.S. House primaries while lawmakers prepared a replacement election framework.
If enough valid signatures are ultimately certified, the process would move toward a statewide yes-or-no election on whether Landry should be recalled. If the petition falls short after certification, no recall election would be held.
Louisiana has a high threshold for statewide recalls, and no governor has been removed through the process. The certification stage therefore matters as much as the collection campaign itself.
For now, the most accurate description is that the signature window has closed and the result remains unresolved publicly. Claims that the recall either succeeded or failed should wait for official certification data from parish registrars and the Secretary of State.
Sources
Louisiana Secretary of State — Recall an Elected Official
Ballotpedia — Jeff Landry recall, Governor of Louisiana (2026)
