Under renewed pressure from right-wing election deniers, the Louisiana Legislature abandoned its attempt to repeal a 2021 law that has made the task of buying voting machines overly burdensome. House Bill 856, sponsored by Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Pineville, died just one step shy of final passage during the closing days of the 2024 legislative session after Johnson ended conference committee negotiations. The proposal would have repealed parts of a 2021 law that added multiple layers of bureaucracy to the Louisiana Department of State’s process to purchase new voting systems. The most significant…