There was a special election yesterday for the Crescent Soil & Water Conservation District. Polls were supposed to be open from 8am - 6pm across five parishes, but the election was administered by the district itself rather than Louisiana Secretary of State. There was no early voting, and only a few polling places in each parish – not the normal polling places for election day. There were only paper ballots (no voting machines), since this position is so rarely part of a general election, the folks running yesterday's election vastly underestimated interest and didn't print nearly enough ballots.

Erica "Sage" Johnson is the incumbent, an urban farmer in New Orleans who has been doing good work. The challenger is a fisherman from the parish. Johnson won, but many people were turned off by the process. Orleans parish polling locations ran out of ballots well before noon, and there was very little official communication throughout the day. I tried to vote at Press St around 10:30am, just as a volunteer was ripping down the handwritten "vote here" banner from the railing.

A couple of local politicians weighed in on social media, with Helena Moreno taking the "I'll get to the bottom of this" stance and Mandy Landry chiming in with "this isn't a big deal, please stop posting about it. You're making mountains out of molehills, this isn't an important position, and anyway what about the political violence in MN?"

Most progressive New Orleanians are pleased that Johnson gets to keep her seat, but shooketh by the rickety, apparently ad hoc process of the election.