Tuesday, April 25, 2006

 

ELECTION CHALLENGES COMING


TIMES PICAYUNE
By Michelle Krupa
Gordon Russell and Frank Donze
Staff writers
(excerpt)

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who for months has railed against the Legislature's refusal to set up out-of-state polling places in such evacuee strongholds as Houston and Atlanta, offered the most high-profile vow: to protest the federal court-approved balloting allowances -- such as voting by fax and at Louisiana satellite locations -- which Jackson said did not fulfill requirements set forth in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

"We must determine who the complaints should be filed with that (the election) was fundamentally unfair because the number of citizens who were disenfranchised by lack of equal access and therefore lack of equal opportunity," he said Monday.

Jackson based his assertion on turnout, arguing that some 26,000 fewer voters cast ballots Saturday compared with the 2002 mayoral primary, when almost 134,000 citizens went to the polls. An estimated two-thirds of the city's 455,000 residents still have not moved home since Hurricane Katrina.


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