High number of black voters taken off rolls
by MARSHA SHULER - Advocate (excerpt)

A higher percentage than usual of black Democratic voters came off state election rolls during last weekend’s legally required cleansing of chronic non-voters. State election officials attribute the situation in large part to Hurricane Katrina’s 2005 displacement of people from Orleans Parish, which is heavily Democratic and black.

Typically, the percentages of canceled black, white, Democratic and Republican voters end up being “a mirror image” of the pre-purge statewide voter registration percentages, secretary of state spokesman Jacques Berry said. "But that is not the case this go-round because of so many people coming off the rolls in Orleans,” Berry said. Pre-purge black voters represented 30.6 percent of the state’s 2.94 million voters.

According to voter statistics released Monday, black voters represented a much higher percentage of the people whose registrations were canceled — 40.3 percent of the 121,826 names removed. Meanwhile, black voters constituted 48.9 percent of the state’s Democratic registrants prior to voter roll clean-up. But they were 62 percent of the Democratic voters removed. After the voter roll cleanup, Louisiana has 2.8 million registered voters.