On May 27, as noted below, the Louisiana Committee on House and Governmental Affairs heard an hour’s testimony about HB 776, the bill to eliminate congressional primaries for small qualified parties. As noted below, the bill was defeated after two Louisiana Libertarians, and one Louisiana Green, and members of the NAACP and College Republicans testified against the bill. This interesting hearing can be watched by using this link. Scroll down to “May 27” and “House & Gov.” HB 776 is the second bill. The discussion of the first bill takes the first 30 minutes, so if you only wish to hear the testimony on HB 776, skip the first 30 minutes.
It’s pretty clear that there is still a lot of sentiment for returning to the open primary, and it wasn’t helped by voters in 2008 showing up at the polls and being told they couldn’t vote, or by having election judges pushing buttons on the side of the voting machine to prevent them from voting.
I wish that someone would have asked for a demonstration of how you could manipulate the voting machines to prevent someone who is qualified to vote for the Louisiana House could be prevented (locked out) from voting in a congressional race.
Rep. Karen Carter Peterson ran for Congress against William Jefferson in 2006, when Louisiana still conducted elections in a conventional manner, and lost in the runoff.
I think there is some sentiment in that direction, but that bill failed in the Senate and was duly noted. I think Dardenne was rightfully put on the spot about this bill being amended to accomplish that goal and if he was using this change to improve his odds in seeking Vitter’s Senate seat. His response was simply to “trust him” that this was not a move for personal gain.
Oh really?
I seem to recall a certain founding father saying something to the effect of “let no more be said about faith in Men in government, by let us bind him with the chains of the Constitution.”
HB 776 had at least FOUR violations of the federal Constitution, and specifically, the court said Dardenne’s type of excuses of financial and administrative hardship do not justify those violations.
I also liked the point made that it is not Dardenne’s constitutional duty to get the legislature to change the law to suit his whim, but rather for him to implement it as they have written it.
I’d like to thank everyone who participated in helping defeat this bill, and everyone here including Mr. Winger for your efforts at keeping people informed and exchanging information and ideas in the effort.
I think it is the responsibility of the SoS to make sure that elections can be conducted practicably.
At the May 19th hearing, immediately after the hearing on HB 776, the committee heard an omnibus bill covering all kinds of law changes recommended by the SoS.
If we are going to have conspiracy theories, then it is most likely that this was a deliberately clumsy attempt to keep the partisan primaries in place. A few sessions down the road, it could well be (mis)remembered that “the legislature considered going back to the open primary and rejected that and then Jay Dardenne tried to sneak it through and that was stopped”.
In two of the CDs in 2008 only one party had any candidates. If the Democratic and Republican parties can’t even come up with one candidate, how likely is it that the 3rd parties will have two filing? It is not exactly like being the Green or Libertarian party nominee will lead to election in the general election.
Throw in a bit of Vitter-Dardenne intrigue and you wonder why the lid to the cookie jar was being banged so loudly.
After all, the two most vocal opponents of the bill, Rep. Peterson and Smith also appeared to advocate returning to the open primary. And they ended up killing any chance of that happening this session.