Early voting for Louisiana’s primary elections begin Saturday – though votes won’t count for every race on the ballot. Louisiana will hold primary elections as scheduled, with early voting beginning May 9 and the official election day on May 16, however its House primary races have been delayed at the direction of Gov. Jeff Landry (R-LA).Landry announced the delay after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling late last month in Louisiana v. Callais, which held the state’s creation of a second minority-majority district in compliance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. In his executive order delaying the races, he stressed that it only applied to the state’s five House seats.
“This is a mandatory step prior to the Governor issuing an executive order suspending the upcoming Louisiana U.S. House races,” he said. “All other races on the ballot, besides the U.S. House races, will continue as scheduled, with early voting beginning on Saturday.”
Voting rights groups have sued the state to stop the delay. Roughly 42,000 people had voted in absentia by the time Landry pushed the House primaries back.
In the meantime, the primaries for all other statewide offices are going ahead. The highest profile race is the primary challenge to incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the latest target of President Donald Trump’s revenge tour. The election is his first since turning against Trump, being one of the few Republicans to vote to impeach him in January 2021. Cassidy refused to back Trump publicly after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, but was protected from the wrath of his electorate as he was last reelected in 2020 while still an ally of Trump.
