Louisiana’s Lost Primary: How a State Cancelled an Election After Voting Began
September 30, 2026
By Chris Wheeler
The Aftershocks of Callais
With the stroke of his pen, Governor Landry effectively voided tens of thousands of votes cast in the State’s House primary elections. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Louisiana v. Callais, Governor Landry issued an executive order suspending the State’s closed-party primary, despite early voting having begun weeks earlier. This move came in response to the Court’s ruling that Louisiana’s U.S. House map, S.B. 8, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander after the state moved to add a second black majority district.
The Governor’s executive order relies on a broad grant of authority found in state law (R.S. 18:401.1) which provides that, during an official state of emergency, the governor may “suspend or delay any qualifying of candidates, early voting, or elections.” Accordingly, Louisiana’s Secretary of State declared an electoral emergency. In addition to suspending the primary, the executive order encouraged the State legislature to enact new congressional maps and to schedule elections as soon as practical.
The Legal Dispute
Within the executive order itself, Louisiana argues that the Callais decision “effectively revives a district court injunction barring [the state] from conducting any congressional elections” under the map deemed unconstitutional by the Court’s 6-3 majority. Therefore, suspending the primary until new maps are drawn was considered necessary to preserve election integrity.
However, the move faced legal challenge from voting rights groups such A.C.L.U.’s Voting Rights Project and the League of Women Voters of Louisiana. In the groups’ emergency lawsuit, they argue that “discarding already-cast ballots violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments and fundamentally undermined the fairness of the electoral process.” In their memorandum in support of a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against the governor’s actions, the plaintiffs attest that
there is no indication the Supreme Court intended for its decision to disrupt elections midstream. Such disruption is contrary to the Supreme Court’s longstanding jurisprudence that cautions courts against disturbing the rules too close to an election. Just weeks ago, the author of the Callais majority opinion bemoaned “[l]ate judicial tinkering’ that ‘can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties, and voters, among others.” . . . That decision came weeks before voting began, . . . much less when voters are already voting.
However, the same day the plaintiffs filed their memorandum, a key component of their argument fell dead in the water. Chief among the plaintiffs’ theories of relief was that the Supreme Court had not yet sent down its decision in Callais to the district court. Therefore, plaintiffs argued that the Supreme Court’s earlier stay of the district court’s injunction remained operative, making S.B. 8 the governing map despite the Callais decision. Yet, in a break from ordinary custom, the Supreme Court issued their judgment forthwith, as opposed to waiting thirty-two days to send the decision to the lower court.
In Justice Jackson’s dissent, she argues that the post-Callais developments in Louisiana have a “strong political undercurrent.” Thus, by breaking from the typical thirty-two-day procedure, the Court “unshackles itself” from constraints and “dives into the fray.” However, the majority argues that there was a good and simple reason to break from the default rule—to prevent the 2026 congressional elections in Louisiana from being conducted under a map held to be unconstitutional. In response to Jackson’s assertion that the move creates an “appearance of partiality,” Justice Alito questions why “unthinking compliance” with the default rule would not itself “create the appearance of partiality (by running out the clock) on behalf of those who may find it politically advantageous to have the election occur under the unconstitutional map.”
Seeing the writing on the wall, the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their action. Nonetheless, this did not spell the end of litigation surrounding the suspension of the election. In a similar action moving through the Western District of Louisiana, Plaintiffs maintain that there remains a live controversy over the counting of already-cast ballots, compliance with federal law protecting military and overseas voters, and the State’s attempt to manufacture mootness through its own later legislation. This assertion is ripe for commentary in my next post.
Welcome (Back) to the Jungle
Louisiana’s legislature scrambled to respond to the executive order. Its solution? Looking at its not-too-distant past. Specifically, in addition to enacting a new congressional map and formally cancelling the May closed primary, Louisiana resurrected its “jungle” primary for the 2026 election.
Unlike a closed-party primary in which one candidate from each party is nominated for the general election, a “jungle” primary permits multiple members of each party to compete on the ballot head-to-head. If no candidate reaches a majority outright, the two candidates receiving the most votes face off in a run-off general election.
The frequent (if not intended) effect is that a strong majority can prevent the minority’s candidate from appearing on the general ballot at all. Given this pitfall, it is evident why Louisiana had moved to eliminate the jungle primary as of 2026—that was until the Governor suspended the State’s first closed-party primary mid-vote. But in a stroke of irony, there is no better symbol for the electoral chaos following Callais than that of a jungle. As the window for judicial rescue closes, it appears that at least for this cycle, the voters will have to once more struggle through its vines.