The Big Swap: Goodbye congressional seat, hello jungle primaries

According to figures released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau, Louisiana is the third slowest growing state in the nation and is now required to forfeit one of its seven congressional seats. In response, House and Senate leaders have scheduled a special redistricting session that will convene March 20. Even though parish-level numbers haven’t been released, ideal populations per district are expected to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 750,000. Nationally, the target is closer to 710,000 people per district. “That shows you how close we were to keeping our seventh,” says Elliott Stonecipher, a demographer and political analyst from Shreveport. It’s going to be a big change for politics on the congressional level, but it won’t be the only watermark left in the wake of 2011. Effective this coming Saturday, Louisiana will be reverting back to its so-called “jungle primaries,” where candidates of all stripes are packed together on a single ballot and forced to fight it out. State lawmakers originally shuttered Louisiana’s open primary system for federal offices just in time for the 2006 elections. But many regard it now as a failed experiment, the Legislature ditched the open system earlier this year during its regular session. Amid the reasons was voter confusion. For example, on Oct. 2 voters participated in closed primaries for the federal races on the ballot and in an open election for the statewide lieutenant governor’s contest. State Rep. Hunter Greene, R-Baton Rouge, author of the enabling Act 570, said the swap will save taxpayers $6.5 million every two years. – Jeremy Alford