Reply #3: NYT: Editorial - New Orleans Needs a Leader [View All]

[livvy]

April 1, 2006
Editorial
New Orleans Needs a Leader

Everyone who lived in New Orleans on the day that Hurricane Katrina struck should have the opportunity to vote in the coming mayoral election. Those who fled the storm and its aftermath did not choose to move away. Many early evacuees thought they were leaving for a single day, never expecting that the levees would break and turn them into long-term exiles overnight.

It is the job of state and local officials to do everything reasonable to make sure that as few people as possible are disenfranchised. To raise awareness, the Louisiana secretary of state's office has organized a publicity blitz with newspaper advertisements and television and radio spots. There will be polling places for the New Orleans election in 10 other parishes around the state. Right now the state budget for this election is $3 million — a figure that the secretary's office expects to climb to as much as $4 million — compared with the $400,000 spent to hold a normal election.

Such efforts tell us that officials are taking the task seriously and making a good-faith effort to do the best job possible in the messy wake of a historic disaster. Yet with hundreds of thousands of city residents spread across the state, the region and the country, the election will invariably be imperfect.

Some civil rights advocates have gone to court to challenge the fairness of this month's election, especially for underprivileged African-Americans. They have called for satellite polling places in cities with large populations of displaced New Orleans residents, like Houston. The ruling that the city election should take place as scheduled, on April 22, was issued this week by Judge Ivan Lemelle of Federal District Court in New Orleans, himself an African-American and a former resident of the hard-hit New Orleans East neighborhood. A runoff is likely to be held later in the mayoral race. The judge declined to require voting centers out of state; the very legality of such polling stations is in doubt.

>more

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/01/opinion/01sat1.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin