Since I don’t live there any more, I’ve been ever-so-slightly hesitant to write on the upcoming mayorial vote in New Orleans. It’s up to the residents – wherever they are – to choose a leader for the rebuilding.
But this transcends such parochial concerns:
The Rev. Jesse Jackson is touring Southern cities this week to rally opposition to next month’s mayoral election in New Orleans, saying too many Hurricane Katrina victims scattered around the country will be unable to vote.
Polimom’s stumped a bit here. Why is it, exactly, that Katrina victims would be unable to vote?
Jackson said the two options for casting a ballot on April 22 – voting absentee, or going back to Louisiana – violate federal law. He said the Postal Service is having trouble delivering mail, and traveling hundreds of miles to vote is a hardship on many evacuees.
So far as I know, the Postal Service is only having trouble delivering mail to New Orleans, which shouldn’t be a problem for people living in… say… Atlanta. Or Houston. Or Anchorage, for that matter. Yes, traveling hundreds of miles to vote would be a hardship; I agree totally. What I don’t see is why they would have to. Absentee voting has been the norm for many, many years for people who are not at their “legal domicile”, and I’m not seeing what’s different with this election.
Furthermore, Polimom’s troubled by the vagueness of this:
Jackson and other civil rights leaders have demanded that the election be postponed. But they have not said when they believe the balloting should be held.
Perhaps they prefer to wait until everyone has returned home to hold this election? How about 2010? (Nagin until 2010???)
It appears that the NAACP, Marc Morial, Jesse Jackson – the whole darned lot of them – are patronizing the evacuated New Orleanians terribly. They’re assuming that these voters cannot handle the mail and are incapable of following the issues or the candidates. How offensively presumptuous!
Treating black Katrina evacuees as if they are incompetent children who are unable to navigate this election exposes an entirely different side of Jesse Jackson, Bill Cosby, and everyone involved – a side that shows the ugly underbelly of ulterior motives and elitism.
New Orleanians, regardless of “color”, absolutely know what’s riding on this election. The last thing they need is somebody’s private agenda to confound the issues further.