Very detailed Lemmy post I wrote about this fuckery and more
Local news article containing the quote about the voter registrar
On Homer Plessey Way, board member Daniel Milojevic stood outside the Bywater polling place in the Press Street Gallery suggesting people try the two Jefferson Parish locations.
He said the local registrar of voters gave the district only 300 ballots per location and told them they could expect about 20 people.
“We had to confirm the number of ballots weeks ago,” he said, before it was clear how high the turnout would be. Milojevic conceded that planning had clearly missed the mark.
As one astute gentleman asked while defending Reddit, and accusing me of spreading misinformation:
If hardly anybody knew, how did turnout exceed expectations within 2 hours?
Because the "expectation" provided by the registrar was literally 20 voters per location (60 voters in total) for the entire fucking city.
So perhaps some degree of incompetence/not having any clue how many people would show up. Not necessarily malicious intent. Seems like it was such a shitshow it'll force a redo. Clearly it should.
That's the thing though, is it just incompetence or is it an attempt to see what people are willing to let slide?
We definitely need a re-do bc otherwise it signals that we're ok with letting it happen again and again. Will there be enough ballots when it's time for us to vote for elections with more at stake like mayor or in the midterms?
I could see low expectations from the registrar of voters for turnout, but 60 people in the entire city? And they just didn't have any kind of plans if more showed up?
We're the first state to start using the DOGE voter database maintenance system. Will we end up with some kind of "glitch" that purges voters on top of being told the registrar made a miscalculation when estimating how many people would actually show up to vote?
This is the kind of election where usually only people who specifically are invested in the thing bother, I wouldn't be surprised if the last time one of these happened they literally did average about 20 votes per polling place, and their plan if more showed up was supplying 15x more ballots than they needed last time, just in case. Which wasn't remotely enough.
The thing is this was the first of its kind election for this district, so where did those estimates even come from? If you give a number it's got to be from somewhere right?
And they were just paper ballots. Nothing special about them. Here's a picture of one of the ballots
Literally nobody could find a printer and some scissors and tell voters they would have more ballots in an hour or so?
This is exactly why so many people showed up. The district encompasses 5 parishes. Both candidates represent different parts of the district with different interests at stake.
The incumbent candidate lives in New Orleans, runs urban gardens around the city, and used her position on the board to create a program that has allowed others to create more gardens and rent tools through the program.
The candidate that challenged her is a commercial fisherman from a smaller town. The department that has jurisdiction over the board is set to be given oversight of testing for seafood safety and regulations. The bill is literally just sitting on the Governor's desk waiting to be signed.
I am honestly kind of suspicious of the candidate that challenged her bc he never mentioned this while he was running.
Putting that aside, and assuming his intentions were good, I could also see why many voters in smaller communities within the district, who depend on the fishing industry for jobs, would want someone like him to have the position on the board.
The incumbent was announced the winner, and that's who I voted for. I still believe there should be a re-do. Voters were turned away from an election that their tax dollars paid for. Unacceptable.
The one thing I'll say in their defense is that a water district board seat, in a special election, is not typically something that generates votes. Perhaps they did that on purpose, thinking the low turnout would help one candidate. We're talking about school board election numbers. The kind of thing where a bus full of people could swing the whole election.
You'll know if it was on purpose or not immediately when we see who won and if they try to stick with the result. If they were out of ballots at 9 am, then they shouldn't even try to count the votes or declare a winner. With the need for a redo being so obvious.