The phones haven’t stopped ringing at the Louisiana Democratic Party offices in Baton Rouge since the polls opened Saturday (May 16) morning.
Executive director Dadrius Lanus said there have been too many to answer them all — as many as 300, possibly more — flooding in from across the state.
“And this is just the ones that we could field,” Lanus said. “We have been fielding calls since 6 a.m. People are still calling."
The calls describe the same issues residents who voted early described to the Gulf States Newsroom: ballot irregularities, voters unable to vote in the U.S. Senate primary, being steered away from Democratic ballots and election officials demanding that No Party voters sign affidavits without allowing them to retain copies.
Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry’s office has not responded to repeated email and phone requests for clarification, interviews or statements since Wednesday.
Voters are also reporting problems exercising their right to vote.
Thomas Edick and his wife, Mira Kohl, told the Gulf States Newsroom that they walked two blocks to their polling place this morning in New Orleans’ Seventh Ward. Both are registered Democrats. Both expected to vote in the Democratic Senate primary. Neither was able to.
“It was greyed out in the booth, along with the [U.S. House] race,” Kohl said.
When Edick flagged it to a poll worker, he said he was told the Democratic Senate primary wasn't being held and that it would be scheduled for the fall. This scenario, however, is the case for the state’s U.S. House primary, which Gov. Jeff Landry postponed in late April following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais — which deemed the state’s congressional map was unconstitutional due to racial gerrymandering.
Election experts say such administrative errors are more likely when election processes change last minute, though it's still unclear exactly how widespread the issues were statewide.
Kohl said the poll worker seemed to acknowledge that things had gone sideways.
"They said, ‘Yeah, this election is all messed up,’" she said.
Neither she nor Edick pushed back further. They didn't want to cause a scene or berate an elderly poll worker. But both left the polling station feeling frustrated.
“The GOP's game in Louisiana is to suppress the vote, and I think confusion plays right into their hands,” Edick said. “I think that's why we're so frustrated, because it's clearly working and working pretty well.”
Louisiana’s Democratic party sent more than 300,000 messages to voters statewide by midday, Lanus said, directing them to a voter protection assistance portal. The state Democratic Party has been working alongside the Democratic National Committee’s civic engagement and voter protection team to get the message out and document every call and complaint.
The “mass confusion,” he said, amounts to “voter suppression and voter intimidation.” Whether that documentation becomes the foundation for litigation may become clear in the days ahead.
“When I tell you, I think there could possibly be lawsuits about what's happening today," Lanus said. "Seriously."
The Louisiana Republican Party said they have not received similar complaints, but Republican voters have also told the Gulf States Newsroom that they were not able to vote in the Republican Senate primary.
The election day confusion is a continuation of what some Louisianans who voted early described, and is not limited to No Party voters. In New Orleans, registered Democrats described arriving at their polling places and discovering they had received different ballots from one another.
Ilyssa Parker, a registered Democrat, found only three of the five constitutional amendments on her ballot. Diana Masters, her neighbor and fellow Democrat, had all five, but she also had the suspended U.S. House race on hers.
On Friday, incumbent Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy issued a "Red Alert" email warning that "because of the Jeff Landry election process mess — voters are being disenfranchised and are not able to vote Cassidy." Cassidy’s campaign had spent weeks urging Democrats and No Party voters to cross over and vote for him in the closed Republican primary.
On a press call, Cassidy said he had spoken with Secretary of State Nancy Landry, who told him voters who entered a booth and found no Senate candidates could step back out and request a different ballot. But most people, he said, have no idea that's even an option.
The problems described by voters fall against a backdrop of an already complicated election.
For this election cycle, Louisiana's legislature switched a subset of races, including the U.S. Senate contest, from the state's longstanding open "jungle primary" to a closed partisan primary.
Layered on top of that is the fallout of Landry's emergency declaration suspending the congressional House races mid-cycle. More than 40,000 absentee ballots had already been cast for those races when Landry announced the votes would not be counted. Landry later said those votes would not be counted in the May 16 election during an interview on “60 Minutes.”
The result, according to LSU professor emeritus and political commentator Robert Mann, is an election so complicated that many may not vote at all. He expects that confusion to show up directly in turnout. The Secretary of State projected around 20% to 25% — a significant drop from roughly 50% in the last contested Senate election.
"The legislature and Gov. Landry have created a system that is almost designed in a lab to discourage people from participating in the electoral process," Mann said.
Mann said the fallout won't end Saturday. Congressional races in the fall are set to run as an open primary, while any Senate runoff remains closed, adding yet another layer of complexity for already bewildered voters.
This story was produced by the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between Mississippi Public Broadcasting, WBHM in Alabama, WWNO and WRKF in Louisiana and NPR.
