by James Parks, Apr 25, 2006

Large numbers of black voters who were evacuated from New Orleans were unable to vote in the Big Easy’s mayoral election April 22 because of an array of administrative blunders and political actions to discourage their votes, according to observers on the ground.

“There was a severe racial impact,” says Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who was in New Orleans Saturday. “Our best count shows that 44 percent voted in predominantly white precincts and only 24 percent in predominantly black precincts,” she says. “That’s a drop of about 25,000–30,000 black votes from the 2002 election, while the number of white votes remained virtually the same as four years ago.”

The process was ineffective for mainly black New Orleans residents who were forced from their homes by Hurricane Katrina and evacuated out of state, Arnwine says. “A lot of people wanted to vote, but couldn’t.” The Bush Justice Department on March 16 approved state and city officials’ election scheme, which allowed only three ways of voting—voting in New Orleans, in satellite polling places around Louisiana or by absentee ballot. A state Senate committee rejected a bill that would create satellite polling places in other states housing Katrina evacuees.

But black voters who remained in New Orleans or were able to get back had serious problems, Arnwine adds. “A lot of the people who made it back to New Orleans found out they were not on the rolls even though they had voted often in the past,” she says.

People were going to some of the mega precincts (set up to take voters from several precincts that are still uninhabitable) and they found out they weren’t on the rolls there. Instead of officials telling them where they should go, they just told them they weren’t on the rolls, according to Arnwine. “That’s inexcusable,” she says.

The race for mayor pitted 22 candidates against each other. Thirty-six percent of the city’s 297,000 eligible voters participated in the election. Mayor Ray Nagin, who is black, received 38 percent of the vote while Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who is white, received 29 percent. The two face off in a May 20 runoff.

According to an analysis by GCR & Associates, a New Orleans-based information technology firm, Nagin received nearly two-thirds of the vote in predominately black neighborhoods, a reversal from 2002 when he received mostly white votes. Some analysts say that because many blacks still have not been able to return to New Orleans, the city faces the possibility of a white mayor for the first time in almost 30 years. The last white mayor was Landrieu’s father, Moon Landrieu, who left office in 1978. Mitch Landrieu’s sister, Mary, is the state’s senior U.S. senator. Another factor that may disenfranchise some evacuated voters, according to the Houston Chronicle, is that the Louisiana secretary of state does not plan to repeat the massive voter education program run before the April 22 vote. 

Members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council say the state and federal governments must make every effort to ensure New Orleans residents can vote:

Katrina evacuees who have lost their homes, their jobs and their communities must not lose their right to vote. In addition to casting absentee ballots, evacuees must be allowed to cast their votes in upcoming local, state and federal elections in 2006 at satellite locations in and outside the State of Louisiana.

The Union Community Fund and the six AFL-CIO constituency groups reached out to displaced voters through ads in newspapers serving African Americans communities, providing registered New Orleans voters with information on obtaining absentee ballots and participating in early voting. The ads were placed in papers in Atlanta, Houston, Jackson, Miss., and throughout Louisiana—locations with the largest concentrations of Katrina evacuees. The ads also listed the local election assistance centers set up in each area.

On the April 24 National Public Radio show, Democracy Now, Ted Shaw, president and director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, called for Louisiana officials to open up the voting so every registered Louisiana voter can participate, no matter where they are.

We believe that everybody should have the right to vote, the right to return, no matter if they are black or poor, rich or white, etc. And the voters should sort all this out. Racially polarized voting has been a long old reality in New Orleans. We want everybody to have the right to vote.

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