Black Voter Turnout Down in New Orleans

[Eugene]

Black Voter Turnout Down in New Orleans

By MICHELLE ROBERTS
The Associated Press
Friday, May 5, 2006; 9:39 PM

NEW ORLEANS -- Black voter turnout in the city's first election after Hurricane Katrina
was down, while white voter turnout was roughly the same, according to statistics released
Friday.

Thirty-one percent of registered black voters cast ballots in the April 22 primary, compared
to 45 percent in the 2002 primary. Roughly half of registered white voters cast ballots
in both years, according to figures released by Secretary of State Al Ater.

<snip>

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/05/AR2006050501650.html

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Mission accomplished. Heckuva job, Brownie.

[smtpgirl]

3. I'll second

The gentrification of NOLA

Kind of reminds me of the gentrification of DC & Baltimore too!!!!

[babylonsister]

2. What a surprise. Compare white to black voters who lost their

homes, it's a no-brainer. :eyes:

[Kutjara]

4. They have a catchy name for it when it happens in other countries:

Ethnic Cleansing.

[journalist3072]

10. Damn! My thoughts exactly! I was just sitting here thinking that's

my next blog post title.

[OneBlueSky]

5. well, DUH! . . . given that the vast majority . . .

are scattered from Seattle to Atlanta, and all points in between . . .

[SoCalDem]

6. Ditto on your "Duh"...

People have been scattered on the wind, like so much chaff.. In their hearts they probably consider NO their "home". but when you have NO money, and are hundreds/tousands of miles away, getting back to vote in a run-off election in a city you can no longer even live in, is not a high priority, and the powers-that-be KNEW it. That's why they made it difficult.

[yankeeinlouisiana]

7. The City just re-opened half of the

lower ninth ward and people can start coming back to their homes. That should help with voter turn out. It'll be an interesting election.

[skipos]

8. I had heard that Landrieu got most of the black vote, Nagin got most

of the white vote. Can anyone confirm or debunk that? I guess it would make sense since Nagin is more conservative than Landrieu and an ex-republican.

[yankeeinlouisiana]

9. Here's a link a found

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-22-neworleans-mayor_x.htm

"Nagin, who became a national symbol of this city's anger and frustration in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans last August, took 38% of the vote in the crowded general primary. Greg Rigamer, a demographics analyst for Louisiana's secretary of state says Nagin, who is black, won big in mostly black precincts and received less than 10% of the white vote."

"It was a turnabout for Nagin, a 49-year-old former cable television executive who got 85% of the white vote when he was elected in 2002."

-snip-

"Landrieu, whose father, Moon, was the last white mayor of New Orleans 30 years ago, came in second with 29%, but his support was more balanced. He got 30% of the white vote and 23% of the black vote, Rigamer says. Landrieu, 45, is in a better position than Nagin to woo the white conservatives who voted for candidates Ron Forman and Rob Couhig, who together received 27%, says Susan Howell, an elections analyst at the University of New Orleans."

[slackmaster]

11. So, did any of the displaced black voters register in other places?

There is no process to automatically un-register a person who moves away from a place.

It's no surprise that people who left the city didn't vote there. But how many of them have established themselves in other places, and registered to vote?

This article tells only one side of a story, one that is not simple. The people who left NO didn't all die or get spirited away by space aliens. They all went somewhere, and should have shifted the demographics whereever they went.

[journalist3072]

12. That article was so slanted til it's not even funny

The author makes it look like all the displaced voters were given all the tools they needed to vote, and they were not.

There should have been satellite places all over the country. We did that for the Iraqis living here in the U.S. who wanted to vote in the recent elections in Iraq.