After Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices further gutted the Voting Rights Act last week, it stood to reason that Louisiana Republicans would do what they’ve long wanted to do: redraw the state’s district map so that the state’s two Black congressmen would almost certainly lose. There was, however, a logistical problem.
The Pelican State’s electoral process, which included balloting in May, was already in motion, and by any reasonable measure, the high court’s ruling came too late in the year to accommodate partisan plans for the 2026 cycle.
Gov. Jeff Landry apparently didn’t care, and just one day after the Louisiana v. Callais ruling came down, the Republican governor suspended scheduled primary elections and directed the legislature to move forward with plans to approve a new district map.
The brazen and undemocratic move, executed two days before early voting began in Louisiana, led to chaotic conditions that were as predictable as they were unavoidable. The New York Times reported:
The signs were stark, in bold, capital letters at early voting sites in Louisiana on Saturday: “ATTENTION! NOTICE OF CANCELLATION.”
The normally scheduled House primaries had been scrapped, the bulletins said, and any votes cast for those races would not be counted. It was an unusual message directed at Louisianians who showed up for the first day of early voting, and a reflection of the dizzying scramble that is playing out after the Supreme Court struck down the state’s congressional map.
Under Landry’s plan, some of the state’s May 16 contests can proceed as planned, but congressional primaries have been suspended at his command. The result, the Times’ report added, was understandable “bewilderment” among local voters who weren’t altogether sure whether the state would count their ballots.
The governor’s gambit is now facing spirited legal challenges, but as it happens, this coincided with a different GOP effort in Louisiana that also undermined democracy.
A Louisiana man named Calvin Duncan was convicted of murder in 1981 and imprisoned for almost three decades before being fully exonerated in 2021, when a judge agreed that he had been unjustly convicted and vacated Duncan’s sentence. In the months and years that followed, he rebuilt his life, graduated from law school at age 60 and even ran a successful campaign to become the Orleans Parish clerk of criminal court, vowing to help reform the justice system that had unjustly sent him to a maximum-security prison for a crime he did not commit.
That didn’t sit well with Landry and the GOP-controlled legislature, which scrambled to eliminate Duncan’s job before he could be sworn in on May 4.
They did exactly that. On the same day that the governor suspended the state’s congressional primary elections, Landry also signed into law a measure that folded the criminal clerk’s responsibilities into the city’s civil clerk’s office.
Duncan filed a federal lawsuit, which has fared well, at least so far: The Times-Picayune in New Orleans reported, “A federal judge on Sunday blocked a state law that would have abolished the Orleans Parish criminal clerk of court position, clearing the way for Calvin Duncan, who was elected to the post last year, to assume office Monday. U.S. District Judge John deGravelles … declared Senate Bill 256 unconstitutional and enjoined Gov. Jeff Landry and Secretary of State Nancy Landry from enforcing it.”
The ruling was encouraging, but it doesn’t negate the fact that the GOP’s effort to eliminate Duncan’s position was emblematic of a larger truth: Democracy suffered some brutal blows in Louisiana last week.
The post In key Southern red state, democracy suffers dramatic back-to-back setbacks appeared first on MS NOW.
