Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco successfully pushed for legislation in February allowing displaced voters to cast their ballots in 10 locations around the state. Blanco said that otherwise, "tens of thousands of citizens could easily be disenfranchised through no fault of their own." But she stopped short of calling for out-of-state polling places.
Despite repeated calls, Blanco was unavailable for comment. But Johnny Anderson, her assistant chief of staff, told Salon that the governor remains confident in the measures taken to accommodate displaced residents, and that the election can proceed with integrity.
Beaulah Labostrie, 84, a New Orleans resident born in the severely damaged 8th Ward, said that the officials' portrayal of absentee ballots as easy and accessible is misleading. "You have to face reality. In our city the educational level wasn't that high," Labostrie, the president of the Louisiana chapter of ACORN, said by phone from her current home in Metairie. "The way [the instructions are] written, it's complicated and not that easily understood. The people will maybe be scared off by that. They don't even know enough of what's going on in our city to really take part. They're not getting enough information."
Kwame Asante, Louisiana state director for the NAACP, affirmed that many people have misunderstood mailings about absentee voting. "The information was confusing at best," Asante said. A number of people the NAACP spoke with, he said, thought that requesting an absentee ballot meant they would need to have it notarized, and that they would have to spend "some amount of money." Another pitfall with absentee balloting, Asante said, is that many Katrina evacuees have been forced to move several times, so it is doubtful that government mailings about the upcoming election have reached them all.
For months now, civil rights groups have fought to delay the election, which was already postponed from Feb. 4. Experts acknowledge there was no easy way to handle it. "One of the things you worry about is people taking positions for electoral advantage," said professor Keith Werhan of Tulane Law School, a specialist in constitutional law and civil rights. "It's reasonable to worry on the one hand that someone wants to speed the election and make absentee voting difficult because you're kind of gerrymandering the electorate. On the other hand, you don't want to have the sense that the election is being postponed until the electorate has changed in a way [that benefits the other side]." But the worst-case scenario, Werhan added, would be to hold an election widely viewed as illegitimate.
"I think the election is really crucial," said Logan, of Brown University. "All decisions about the rebuilding of the city have been put on hold up to now. There's been much discussion but people have not taken clear positions, and there is no city policy at the moment."
Logan said that reconstruction decisions will be made primarily by municipal authorities, under the new mayor. "The federal and state government will have a very big role in the rebuilding of the levee and what funds are available to work with on the local level, but I think they're going to steer clear on decisions of where to actually rebuild," he said. Those decisions, Logan said, will dictate the future for much of the city's black population, who made their home in many of the Katrina-ravaged neighborhoods.
Veteran politician Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and incumbent New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, the only major black candidate, are leading the pack of 22 hoping to make it to the runoff in May. Landrieu's campaign has emphasized reaching across racial lines, while Nagin, who won his first term largely with the support of white voters, is now targeting the black vote. Recently, Nagin participated in an NAACP protest decrying the unfairness of the election and has condemned reconstruction plans that neglect black neighborhoods. Landrieu has not taken a clear stance on rebuilding, though he has argued that residents should be able to decide whether to rebuild certain neighborhoods.
As of Wednesday evening, still a week and a half before Election Day, 3,236 votes had been counted in early voting at satellite polling stations, according to Louis Keller Sr., the New Orleans registrar of voters. Absentee votes had not yet been counted. The preliminary results show a sharp increase in early voter participation: In the last mayoral election, 2,392 residents participated in early voting, with 160 coming from absentee ballots, according to Keller.
But even if early voter turnout continues to be strong, said Tulane's Werhan, it remains unclear how much say the population of pre-Katrina New Orleans will have in selecting the city's next mayor. "Hopefully we will have a demographic that looks somewhat like what we had before," Werhan said. "This election is a crucial moment for us."
About the writer
Tracy Clark-Flory is an editorial fellow at Salon.
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