|
Friend, Black voters in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, were outraged when a state judge ruled last December that their favored candidate for sheriff, Henry Whitehorn, had to submit to a third election after he won a runoff by one vote and a recount confirmed his one-vote margin of victory. Throwing out the election results particularly stung because Whitehorn would not only be the first Black sheriff in Caddo Parish, but one of only a handful of Black sheriffs in Louisiana history. Whitehorn is a Black man with decades of Louisiana law enforcement experience, including 10 years as a U.S. marshal after President Barack Obama nominated him for the position. His challenger was a lawyer without law enforcement credentials. “We were aghast that they wouldn’t uphold the recount,” said Billy Anderson, the North Louisiana organizer for the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice. “Sometimes an election can come down to race.” Close elections that prompt recounts and legal challenges are hardly uncommon. They often result from poor voter turnout that can leave qualified candidates without decisive victories. That’s one reason why the Southern Poverty Law Center last month launched The South’s Got Now | Decidimos (which means “we decide”), a bilingual voter engagement campaign in English and Spanish. Through the November elections, the campaign will focus on educating and energizing Black and Latinx voters ages 18-29 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.
|
