04-12-06,9:41am

NOTE: Registered New Orleans voters have until April 18 to request an absentee ballot for the April 22 mayoral primaries. The absentee ballot must be returned by April 21. Early voting is taking place April 10–13 and 15. For more information or to request an absentee ballot, displaced voters can call 504-658-8300 or 800-883-2805. On April 15, buses will take voters from the NAACP centers in Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Dallas; Houston; Jackson, Miss.; and San Antonio to satellite polling places in Louisiana to participate in the early voting period.



Hurricane Katrina displaced hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents.

Now, they also may lose their right to vote.

Together, unions and civil rights and religious groups are working to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Even though they were forced to evacuate their homes because of the hurricane and relocate out of state, more than half of New Orleans’ 460,000 residents may not get to vote in the April 22 elections and the May 2 runoff.

The Bush administration has failed miserably to provide needed aid for people to return home, and now local officials refuse to allow their citizens the right to vote at satellite voting centers outside Louisiana.

The Bush Justice Department on March 16 approved state and city officials’ election scheme, which allows only three ways of voting—voting either in New Orleans, in satellite polling places around Louisiana or by absentee ballot. A state Senate committee rejected a bill that would create satellite polling places in other states with Katrina evacuees.

Hurricane Katrina evacuee Olton Holmes (photo, above), asks: “How can you have fair elections where you don’t have your own people back?”

We have people in Florida, Alabama, Texas. How you are going to get all these people to vote absentee? There’s nothing in place. So many of the people aren’t even back. I’ve been driving around the city. I see it. There’s no place for most people to come back to. It’s still so bad, you might be one of the only people on a block with 14 or 15 houses. It’s not going to be a fair election. There’s no way the city’s even ready to get the population back.

Holmes was among 400 Hurricane Katrina survivors on Capitol Hill in February, where they testified before Congress and proposed viable legislative plans to deliver real assistance to Hurricane Katrina survivors. When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Holmes, his wife, Elisabeth, and their two children rushed from their house as the roof caved in. Their neighborhood was declared a disaster area.

Melanie Campbell, executive director of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, which includes the AFL-CIO and several affiliated unions, calls the government treatment of evacuees a “shame and a disgrace.”

Our government found a way to provide access to the ballot for Iraqi citizens living in America to vote and established multiple polling locations all across the country using our tax dollars for them to vote for a new leader in Iraq without blinking an eye. Why is it so difficult to provide access to the ballot for American citizens who have been displaced in their own country to vote in a local mayor’s race in New Orleans? Our analysis is that our government doesn’t have the will to do so.

Members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council say the state and federal governments must make every effort to ensure New Orleans residents can vote:

Katrina evacuees who have lost their homes, their jobs and their communities must not lose their right to vote. In addition to casting absentee ballots, evacuees must be allowed to cast their votes in upcoming local, state and federal elections in 2006 at satellite locations in and outside the State of Louisiana.

The Union Community Fund and the six AFL-CIO constituency groups also are spending nearly $35,000 to reach out to displaced voters through ads in newspapers owned by African Americans, providing registered New Orleans voters with information on obtaining absentee ballots and participating in early voting. The ads were placed in papers in Atlanta, Houston, Jackson and throughout Louisiana—locations with the largest concentrations of Katrina evacuees. The ads also list the local election assistance centers set up in each area.



The vote scheme has drawn protests as well. Nearly 4,000 people rallied April 1 to protest the scheduled elections. The Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton joined with comedian Bill Cosby to lead the “Our Right to Return, Vote and Rebuild” march to demand voting rights for New Orleans natives.



Jackson and other civil rights leaders groups say the election scheme favors the mostly white population who has returned to the city or can easily travel to New Orleans over the minority, low-income evacuees who are less likely to have fixed, long-term addresses.



“What happens in New Orleans will affect voting rights all over the United States,” Sharpton says.



NAACP President Bruce S. Gordon has asked Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) to postpone New Orleans’ primary election and the general election in May by executive order until there are assurances that all New Orleans voters, regardless of where they live, will be able to vote.



“We are afraid that many African American voters will be disenfranchised due to unclear directives, misinformation, and acts of omission on the part of those officials charged with ensuring equal access to the polls,” Gordon says.