[StBernard] Eligible voting pool plummets in New Orleans, St. Bernard Parish

[Westley Annis]

Eligible voting pool plummets in New Orleans, St. Bernard Parish

Published: Saturday, October 22, 2011, 8:00 AM

 By Benjamin Alexander-Bloch, The Times-Picayune 

New Orleans has 17 percent fewer registered voters today than the last time
Louisiana held a primary to elect a governor. 

The majority of those 50,000 voters came off the New Orleans rolls in
December during the first extensive voter purge since Hurricane Katrina.

For the congressional election last November, 274,000 New Orleanians could
have cast a ballot, according to secretary of state figures. That's despite
the fact that the 2010 census now tells us there were only 270,614 adults
living in New Orleans at the time.

That means New Orleans had a whopping 101 percent voter registration. Today,
it's at a more historically, and logically, reasonable 85 percent.

St. Bernard Parish likewise had astronomically high numbers, with 102
percent of its adults registered to vote for the 2010 midterm congressional
election. The 2010 census listed 26,720 adults in St. Bernard, while the
secretary of state had about 27,300 registered voters for that Nov. 2
election.

Despite now having 42 percent fewer voters than it did for the last
pre-Katrina gubernatorial primary in 2003, current numbers still place St.
Bernard quite high at 93 percent.

Nationally, about 65 percent of adults were registered to vote for the
November election, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics.

In the metro area, New Orleans and St. Bernard lost the most voters and were
the major anomalies since the 2007 election. St. Charles, St. John and St.
Tammany parishes showed slight increases in the number of registered voters,
along with the state as a whole, and other parishes such as Jefferson had
slight decreases.

Because of inflated registrar of voter rolls in New Orleans and St. Bernard
since Katrina, voter turnout figures there have been absurdly inaccurate.

The secretary of state listed turnout in New Orleans at a measly 27 percent
for the 2007 gubernatorial primary, whereas the last pre-Katrina
gubernatorial primary in 2003 had 42 percent turnout.

As St. Bernard lost 18,216 voters since the last pre-Katrina governor's
race, it's not surprising that voter turnout in 2007 was listed at 37
percent compared with the 2003 election's 61 percent.

"There's no doubt that the turnout rates have been mismeasured since
Katrina," said University of New Orleans political scientist Ed Chervenak.
"We knew the number of voters that they were turning out, we just didn't
know the percentage because of the inflated registration numbers."

Tracking population shifts

The voter roll drops generally mirror the voting-age population decline
shown in the 2010 census, with some discrepancies.


>From the last pre-Katrina gubernatorial primary in 2003, New Orleans lost

62,116 registered voters, a 21 percent decrease. The census showed New
Orleans lost 84,652 adults between 2000 and 2010, or a 24 percent decrease.

St. Bernard lost 23,554 adults between 2000 and 2010, according to the
census, or a 47 percent decrease. That's compared with the 18,216 voters
lost since 2003.

St. Bernard President Craig Taffaro contends one reason for St. Bernard's
still-high voter registration percentage -- 93 percent -- might be that the
2010 census lowballed his parish's population. Taffaro and other parish
officials question the 2010 total of 35,897 parish residents and instead put
the parish's total population between 43,000 and 45,000.

Taffaro says he has informed the U.S. Census Bureau that St. Bernard expects
to contest the numbers, but he says the parish still is working with
attorneys, along with nearby parishes, to determine the best approach.

Inactive voter purge put off

The belated voter purge was caused by actions by the Legislature soon after
Katrina.

In 2006, the secretary of state and local registrar of voters officials had
been scheduled to examine the rolls to determine which voters were inactive,
but because of Katrina, the Legislature canceled that canvassing, allowing
large swaths of voters who no longer lived in the New Orleans area to remain
on the rolls until this past December.

Inactive voters are those who do not respond to mailings asking about their
residency status and have not voted in recent elections.

State law requires the registrar to remove inactive voters from the rolls if
they fail to vote in two consecutive federal general elections -- the ones
held on Tuesdays in even-numbered years -- plus every election in between.

As the next federal elections that fit that mold were in November 2008 and
2010, canceling the 2006 canvassing meant inactive voters who had left
because of Katrina were given several more years.

But despite the purge that eventually came in December, voter rolls could
still be high today in some parishes because of another law the Legislature
passed in 2006.

Lingering on the rolls

That law, which is still in effect, states any "person who has been
involuntarily displaced from his place of residence by the effects of a
gubernatorially declared state of emergency shall not be considered to have
vacated his residence and shall be considered to be an actual bona fide
resident of the state and parish in which he is registered to vote unless he
has either established a new domicile or has changed his registration to an
address outside the voting district."

Some contend that many St. Bernard residents who moved elsewhere, such as
St. Tammany Parish, still consider St. Bernard home and own property there
and therefore may cross the lake today to cast their ballot. Double voting,
both say in St. Tammany and St. Bernard, would be extremely difficult
because of the state's centralized registration system.

"People will maintain an active status in places like St. Bernard even when
in reality they should be voting in Slidell," said demographer Greg Rigamer.
"We really should be encouraging people to be registered in the parishes
they live in."

The possibility that some St. Tammany transplants are voting outside of that
parish is all the more possible by noticing how St. Tammany's uptick in
voters is about 15,000 voters shy of its increase in adults.

Since the last pre-Katrina gubernatorial primary in 2003, St. Tammany gained
22,700 voters, a 17 percent increase, but in that decade, St. Tammany's
population had increased by 36,735 adults, or 27 percent.

Benjamin Alexander-Bloch can be reached at bbloch at timespicayune.com or
504.826.3321.



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