Very detailed Lemmy post I wrote about this fuckery and more
Local news article containing the quote about the voter registrar
On Homer Plessey Way, board member Daniel Milojevic stood outside the Bywater polling place in the Press Street Gallery suggesting people try the two Jefferson Parish locations.
He said the local registrar of voters gave the district only 300 ballots per location and told them they could expect about 20 people.
“We had to confirm the number of ballots weeks ago,” he said, before it was clear how high the turnout would be. Milojevic conceded that planning had clearly missed the mark.
As one astute gentleman asked while defending Reddit, and accusing me of spreading misinformation:
If hardly anybody knew, how did turnout exceed expectations within 2 hours?
Because the “expectation” provided by the registrar was literally 20 voters per location (60 voters in total) for the entire fucking city.
So perhaps some degree of incompetence/not having any clue how many people would show up. Not necessarily malicious intent. Seems like it was such a shitshow it’ll force a redo. Clearly it should.
The age old question “Were they stupid or evil?”
I guess we’ll see who wins the seat. If it just so happens to be an industry flak who toes the line every time the local oligarchs snap their fingers and gets generous kickbacks for the effort without ever being questioned, I’m putting my money on “evil”. If its a clueless perennial candidate who just throws their hat into every race, then takes office and blunders around for six months before being removed by the county/state on ethics charges, I’ll concede it may just be election management stupidity.
Elections official here, though in a different state.
We had the same thing happen here for a conservation district. Here are a few facts for our situation, it may be different than this news item, but it’s similar.
Conservation districts handle their own elections, they aren’t done by the state/county.
The last time they had an election, votes were in the low hundreds, this last time votes were in the thousands.
Our conservation district doesn’t get “official ballots” they just had something simple and when they needed more they printed more, but they were not prepared for the amount of work involved.
Conservation district elections here are not distributed to all households, they are an “interested parties show up” sort of deal. I believe in the old days you had to be a land owner to vote in then. These days I believe you need to be a resident. I’m the past no one really cared much about them, they decide things like where to plant trees to fight erosion and stuff like that. They aren’t making “political” decisions.
Please keep in mind that this wasn’t a normal election like you think of, it was more along the lines of an HOA election in terms of how it is conducted.
I don’t know if some party just googled “election” and mobilized for this, but this kind of turnout was new and unexpected.
I have no problem believing this district was blindsided by this.
It’s important to remember that this is a different sort of election though.
I’m glad you commented bc I have a question you might be able to answer. The district covers 5 parishes (we do parishes instead of counties) but the news article states the registrar of voters provided the number of 300 ballots at each location and expectation of 20 voters.
Only 3 of the 5 parishes actually had voting locations, so voters from 2 parishes had to travel to vote.
Each parish has its own registrar. It’s unclear which parish the registrar that provided that estimate is from, but why would anyone expect the estimated number of voters in smaller parishes to be exactly the same as larger parishes?
The only reason there was an election is because the incumbent candidate was suddenly challenged by a commercial fishing captain. Keep this in mind, and remember that because of our proximity to the gulf, fishing and seafood is still a pretty big industry for the state.
It was all very odd, and caught people’s attention mainly because:
A. Typically people on the board hold these seats unchallenged for as long as they wish to remain on the board.
B. The district covers 5 parishes, but this board member is from New Orleans/Orleans Parish. She runs several urban gardens and contributes to local farmers markets. This is likely why she was able to mobilize so many voters, and why the news of the vote spread like it did.
C. Some weird things that have happened regarding voting the last two times the city voted, has everyone on high alert for attempts to sneak corruption through without people realizing it.
The election was on Saturday. As it turns out, the Tuesday before the election, the Louisiana Senate President had signed a bill to change the regulation process for seafood safety and testing. It is still sitting on the governor’s desk, just waiting to be signed.
The bill also gives oversight of seafood regulation to the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry. The conservation board the candidates were running for also just happens to fall under the jurisdiction of this same department.
Louisiana lawmakers send seafood safety, oversight bill to Landry’s desk
If this is all be one big coincidence, it certainly is an odd one. Rather than risk some kind of typical Louisiana good ole boy corruption BS, why not just allow everyone that wants to vote, the chance to vote?
It turns out the incumbent candidate from New Orleans won, but they’re not releasing any numbers of how many votes she actually won compared to the other candidate.
I voted for her, but I still strongly believe they should call for a re-do bc this all sets a very bad precedent for the future. Even though it’s not a normal election, our tax dollars fund this board. You should not be able to turn voters away, and then just shrug it off as incompetence or special circumstance.
Well shoot… My whole comment just disappeared. I’ll do bullet points.
Even though my state is vote by mail, smaller districts like the conservation district follow different rules based on their founding documents and may do elections completely differently. Ours did theirs in person because that’s what their framework is.
Ballot ordering should be based on history. If they only had that little available, it suggests to me that may have been historically sufficient. What was the turnout last time? How much money would it be worth spending on ballots and polling places for that many/few voters?
I agree that they shouldn’t be turning anyone away. In my state we can print ballots on demand if we need them. I wish every state was invested in preventing disenfranchisement.
This was the first of its kind of election in the district, so I would really like to know where they got those estimated numbers, and if they went only by one parish voter registrar when determining the numbers for 5 different parishes
How are we still giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt? What will it take?
Hey now, its Louisiana. No shortage of corrupt legacy Democrats. William Jefferson being a hallmark example.
The whole state is pay-2-play. Also, incidentally, an absolute hotbed of smuggling and espionage going back to the Huey Long era. Tons of Soviet-Era spying. Tons of FBI ratfvcking. Tons of mob activity. Like, when you hear about the CIA move coke in from Colombia, it’s a coin-flip chance the product was moved through Miami or New Orleans.
That’s the thing though, is it just incompetence or is it an attempt to see what people are willing to let slide?
We definitely need a re-do bc otherwise it signals that we’re ok with letting it happen again and again. Will there be enough ballots when it’s time for us to vote for elections with more at stake like mayor or in the midterms?
I could see low expectations from the registrar of voters for turnout, but 60 people in the entire city? And they just didn’t have any kind of plans if more showed up?
We’re the first state to start using the DOGE voter database maintenance system. Will we end up with some kind of “glitch” that purges voters on top of being told the registrar made a miscalculation when estimating how many people would actually show up to vote?
This is the kind of election where usually only people who specifically are invested in the thing bother, I wouldn’t be surprised if the last time one of these happened they literally did average about 20 votes per polling place, and their plan if more showed up was supplying 15x more ballots than they needed last time, just in case. Which wasn’t remotely enough.
The thing is this was the first of its kind election for this district, so where did those estimates even come from? If you give a number it’s got to be from somewhere right?
And they were just paper ballots. Nothing special about them. Here’s a picture of one of the ballots
Literally nobody could find a printer and some scissors and tell voters they would have more ballots in an hour or so?
This is exactly why so many people showed up. The district encompasses 5 parishes. Both candidates represent different parts of the district with different interests at stake.
The incumbent candidate lives in New Orleans, runs urban gardens around the city, and used her position on the board to create a program that has allowed others to create more gardens and rent tools through the program.
The candidate that challenged her is a commercial fisherman from a smaller town. The department that has jurisdiction over the board is set to be given oversight of testing for seafood safety and regulations. The bill is literally just sitting on the Governor’s desk waiting to be signed.
I am honestly kind of suspicious of the candidate that challenged her bc he never mentioned this while he was running.
Putting that aside, and assuming his intentions were good, I could also see why many voters in smaller communities within the district, who depend on the fishing industry for jobs, would want someone like him to have the position on the board.
The incumbent was announced the winner, and that’s who I voted for. I still believe there should be a re-do. Voters were turned away from an election that their tax dollars paid for. Unacceptable.
The one thing I’ll say in their defense is that a water district board seat, in a special election, is not typically something that generates votes. Perhaps they did that on purpose, thinking the low turnout would help one candidate. We’re talking about school board election numbers. The kind of thing where a bus full of people could swing the whole election.
You’ll know if it was on purpose or not immediately when we see who won and if they try to stick with the result. If they were out of ballots at 9 am, then they shouldn’t even try to count the votes or declare a winner. With the need for a redo being so obvious.
Nah, there’s been a few recent elections and ballot initiatives that are explicitly designed to undermine democracy and set up separate courts. This is definitely on purpose.
I’m willing to agree with malicious intent if they try keep the result. There should be no need to count the ballots, with the need to redo being so obvious.