Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 4, No. 2 | The Lost (And Found) Voters of Hurricane Katrina, page 4

The April 22 Primary Election
On April 22, the city was buzzing with election activities. As many as 50 supporters and candidates could be seen at several major intersections waving signs and shouting encouragement to drivers, who honked their horns and shouted back. Campaign signs of all sizes were everywhere, including over 100 of the state elections division’s portable billboards displaying the toll-free number to call for their precinct’s new location.

At the smaller precincts, voting was steady and orderly, while at the new combined voting sites, the atmosphere was downright festive. For example, over 50 precincts in the devastated, predominantly black New Orleans East area had been combined into a “super site” at the parish-owned Voting Machine Warehouse on U.S. Highway 90. Cars were parked along the highway and in nearby subdivision streets. Candidates, supporters, election monitors, precinct workers, state elections officials and others converged at the large building—with rows of tables inside, each representing a precinct and staffed by dozens of election workers. Many returnees were reunited with family and neighbors and lingered, swapping stories about Katrina and its aftermath, and sharing their thoughts on the elections. One reporter observed, “It was like a family reunion without the potato salad.”

For elections officials, the new and challenging conditions created some problems. Volunteer monitors noted confusion about assigned polling places, names missing from registration lists, balky or nonworking machines and increased police presence, according to the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. But the problems were not serious enough to undermine public confidence in the results, and there was no legal challenge.

As expected, Mayor Ray Nagin came in first, but with only 38 percent of the votes, followed by Mitch Landrieu, with 29 percent. They would face each other in the May 20 runoff. Ron Forman finished third with 19 percent, and Rob Couhig with 10 percent. The rest of the field divided up the remaining six percentage points.

The May 20 Runoff Election
The four weeks between the primary and runoff elections left little time for dissecting what happened and planning a successful strategy. Katrina and the resulting diaspora had taken their toll on black turnout, especially in poor black neighborhoods. Even though blacks were still a voting majority on April 22, they were a smaller majority by six or seven percentage points—enough to decide elections, but a less comfortable margin.

On April 22 turnout was 23 percent below the 2002 mayoral election in predominantly black, middle-class New Orleans East and nearly 40 percent below in the economically depressed Lower Ninth Ward, according to an analysis by John R. Logan, a Brown University sociologist. In contrast, turnout was actually higher in the predominantly white French Quarter and Garden District, which experienced little flooding.

The decrease in black turnout was the result of “an uneven playing field,” according to Rev. Jesse Jackson’s column in the Chicago Sun-Times. “The New Orleans election was held with secret voter rolls. Candidates had no information on where voters around the country lived and could not contact them. Voters heard little about the election; only a few candidates could afford ads in selected cities,” Jackson wrote.

Over 21,000 voters cast ballots by mail or early at the 10 satellite voting centers and the city registrar’s office. This was about ten times the usual number, but far short of potential. In fact, given the estimated 200,000 registered voters outside the state, Logan said, “the number of absentee ballots is not impressive.” However, nearly one out of five ballots cast was absentee—and over half of absentee ballots in the primary were from black voters—a fact neither candidates nor voting rights organizations could ignore. As a result, ACORN and its partner organizations redoubled their work to expand the number of voters for the runoff and to target voters who had either cast an absentee ballot or had received a ballot but had not mailed it. The state automatically sent absentee ballots to everyone who had requested one for the primary, and the candidates and voter organizations could then use information on these absentee voters for targeted outreach.

While planning the next round of chartered bus trips from Houston and other cities outside the state, organizations also intensified their focus on New Orleans local and area residents with barrages of media advertising and grassroots campaigning. Instead of voting at the Lake Charles satellite center as before, Samuels decided to cast her May 20 vote in person in the city, reuniting with friends and neighbors at her Ninth Ward polling site. Then she returned to Houston, loaded up a U-Haul truck with her belongings and moved in with relatives in the Uptown section of New Orleans.

Next page: The post-Katrina exodus by black residents, especially the poor, has taken a heavy toll on voter participation in New Orleans; many may never return.

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5