We've heard it from Rev. Jesse Jackass Jackson and others -- holding an election in New Orleans today would disenfranchise thousands, and result in a white electorate deciding the direction of a black city. The election must be delayed.

Here is one example.

From the very top, let's get something straight.

I think that Ray Nagin, the black mayor of New Orleans, did a terrible job of planning right before Hurricane Katrina hit the city. His leadership during the storm, when people were stranded and dying, was abysmal. And his leadership hasn't gotten any better in that tragedy's aftermath.

That said, I'm appalled that the U.S. Justice Department has blessed the disenfranchisement of black voters in the Big Easy's upcoming municipal elections.

The hurricane and subsequent floodwaters forced more than two-thirds of New Orleans' population to flee that city. Indeed, officials urged and ordered many reluctant residents to leave.

Officials directed residents to get on buses and planes headed out of the Gulf Coast disaster zone. Many of the evacuees had no idea where they were being taken. Against their will, many ended up in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and other cities hundreds -- even thousands --of miles from their devastated New Orleans neighborhoods.

Now that the city is scheduled to hold elections for mayor, guess what? No special provisions are being made to accommodate voting by New Orleans residents who are involuntarily exiled outside Louisiana.

To make matters worse, the U.S. Justice Department, which is charged with making sure that minority voting rights are not being denied, has approved this totally unfair plan.

Don't forget, many of the people forced out of New Orleans were black and poor. Many who have been able to stay or to move back already are white and/or have some measure of financial wealth. Though 23 people have signed up to challenge Nagin, the real race is between Nagin and either Mitch Landrieu or Ron Forman, both of whom are white.

Yet the issue here is not race. It's fairness -- for everyone.

So while the issue ostensibly isn't race for this author (David Porter of the Orlando Sentinel), it is all about race.

But what about the reality on the ground in the New Orleans area?

Interestingly enough, here is what a demographic analysis of the city and the surrounding areas shows. according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

A substantial majority of New Orleans' registered voters still reside within the city or its suburbs, and their racial makeup closely mirrors that of all registered voters before the storm, according to new data commissioned by the secretary of state.

The new data challenges the popular notion that the out-of-state votes of displaced New Orleans residents loom large over the April 22 election, as well as the perception that in-town voters are overwhelmingly white and those out of town are overwhelmingly black, said Greg Rigamer of GCR and Associates, who produced the data as a consultant for the state.

In the first statistical portrait of registered voters, as opposed to overall population, Rigamer's company found that about 80 percent of the city's 297,053 registered voters either have not filed a change of address form or have listed a new address within the metro New Orleans area, the data show. The actual percentage of voters living locally is not that high -- not everyone who has moved informed the post office -- but the data strongly indicates that a majority of voters remain nearby, Rigamer said.

"If I was a candidate running this race, I'd really focus on the local voters," Rigamer said.

Further, the data shows the proportion of white voters to black voters living in the metro area -- although not necessarily in Orleans Parish -- remains almost the same as before the flood, about 32 percent white and 62 percent black. And the data on race is more reliable, Rigamer said, because of the massive size of the sample.

In other words, there is no raqcial or economic disenfranchisement if the vote is held today. The elections can be safely held without unduly impacting any group covered under the voting rights laws of the United States.

Isn't it a bitch when liberal talking points rund smack-dab into a pile of contradictory facts?

Anyone want to bet that it makes a difference?

Posted by: Greg at 10:37 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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