Reply #2: LA: NOLA Election Delayed for Months—Just in time for HAVA machines!

[autorank]

You see, LA had $24 million taken out of its budget for levee maintenance and $26 million added for voting machines…all in 2004. Now those machines are not there and there’s no election. That’s like saying you’ll stop eating because you don’t have your new silverware. What a load of you know what. “It’s all whatever” to BushCo.
http://www.theolympian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051203/NEWS/51203027

New Orleans won’t be ready to vote for months, election official says

By DOUG SIMPSON

The Associated Press

BATON ROUGE, La. — New Orleans’ mayoral and city council elections should be postponed for up to eight months because of Hurricane Katrina, the state’s top election official recommended Friday.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco has the final say on whether the elections will go forward as scheduled Feb. 4. She was not immediately available for comment but has said she will follow Secretary of State Al Ater’s advice.

In his recommendation, Ater said the election should be held by Sept. 30.

The highest profile race set for Feb. 4 is for mayor. Incumbent Ray Nagin, who has gotten both criticism and compliments for his handling of the Katrina disaster, has not formally announced whether he will seek re-election. Races for city council and sheriff also are on the ballot.

Ater said he recommended the delay with regret but noted he could not guarantee that New Orleans would be physically able to set up the infrastructure for an election he called “the most important in that city’s life.”

“The new administration, the new council, the new people that will be elected, will be in charge of making decisions affecting billions and billions and billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives,” Ater said.

Ater laid much of the blame for the delay on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which he said has not provided “a penny” of the $2 million his office requested to repair voting machines damaged in the storm, which struck Aug. 29,