Google Gemini was used to research this piece. This Essay was posted on 5/24/2026.
Republican Governor Jeff Landry initiated a recent example of ballot theft by gerrymandering over the 2026 elections. Landry delayed primary voting for Congressional House Representatives with the specific intent of reducing Democratic representation in Congress. Landry delayed the vote to give the State Legislature time to complete the gerrymandering. An outcome of this delay is the nullification of 45,000 early ballots for the House of Representatives. Landry said that the voters can vote again in a special primary election to be held during the general election in November. The full impact of this effort to countermand the voters is much darker.
Strangely, the Supreme Court isn’t following the Purcell principle in the current Louisiana case. The Purcell principle comes from a 2006 Supreme Court case that established the precedent that election rules and redistricting should not be changed during an ongoing election period. While the basic idea of the Purcell principle applies to Louisiana, the Supreme Court nit-picked a way to make the principle inapplicable. It isn’t a coincidence that the biggest beneficiary to this ruling is Donald Trump.
Trump’s approval numbers are so low that a Democratic sweep in Congressional elections seems inevitable. Trump doesn’t want the voting public to decide this election, so he is ordering up as many gerrymandered House seats as he needs. Clearly, Trump is trying to override our right to vote, and he could succeed, with the help of the Supreme Court.
Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent, you should be concerned. One solution is to form a bipartisan agreement to vote for the candidate that doesn’t support Trump, even if you are a Republican. If everyone votes for the non-Trump candidate, then the gerrymandered districts will be ineffective.
We can then straighten out our two-party democracy after the dust settles.
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