"It was an embarrassing display of racism clouded behind some arguments that didn't make any sense at all," Rep. Jailia Jefferson-Bullock, D-New Orleans.
Rep. Jailia Jefferson-Bullock, D-New Orleans was the sponsor of legislation that would have let New Orleans evacuees vote for a new mayor, City Council and other offices in satellite locations in Baton Rouge and nine other Louisiana major metropolitan areas.
The Louisiana NAACP supported moving the date of the election to September 30, 2005. That legislation failed.
The Louisiana NAACP supported legislation allowing for satellite polling booths, that legislation failed.
The Louisiana NAACP supported legislation allowing first time voters to vote by absentee, that legislation has also failed.
Leading the opposition are Republican lawmakers.
House and Governmental Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Charles Lancaster, R-Metairie, said the state has gone as far as it should go with a "liberalized" absentee voting plan.
Lancaster referred to legislation that failed to pass that would have allowed some people who registered by mail to vote absentee. Present law requires voters who registered by mail to cast ballots the first time in person so their identity can be confirmed.
Pre-Katrina, the U. S. Census reports that New Orleans had a population of nearly 500,000. Over 300,000 of those residents, mostly Black, were displaced after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. New York Times reporter Clifford Levy stated in his article on November 17, 2005, New Orleans Vote Near, but Who Will Go?, "since the hurricane, most of the estimated 60,000 to 100,000 residents who have returned to New Orleans are white and middle class, changing the city's racial composition, which had been two-thirds black."
Levy reported that there are roughly 219,000 New Orleans evacuees that are voting age [over the age of 18], estimates that 70 percent of those are black, which represents 153,300 black voters who won't have access to the ballot in the 2006 elections. "This is voter disenfranchisement by attrition" states Levy.