Voting underway in neck-and-neck president election
Lincoln Parish voters are going to the polls today under what are forecast to be rainy skies to elect a president, a member of Congress and decide the fate of one proposed state constitutional amendment.
Polls opened at 6 a.m. and will close at 8 p.m. Voters need to bring photo identification.
“I think we’ll have a fairly good turnout,” Clerk of Court Linda Cook said Monday. “We’re ready.”
This year’s neckand- neck presidential race between Democrat incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump and is the first post- pandemic race for the White House.
Election day comes amid high voter interest, and a large, but not record, local early voting turnout.
By the end of the in-person early voting period Tuesday, 8,647 voters had cast A ballot.
In the 2020 race between Democrat then-Vice President Joe Biden and Trump, 19,437 local voters cast ballots for a voter turnout of approximately 69.6%. Trump won the parish with 51%.
Trump is expected to carry both Lincoln Parish and Louisiana again this year.
Republicans have won Louisiana and Lincoln Parish in every presidential election since George W. Bush first ran in 2000. Democrats have carried the state only four times in the last 64 years: John F. Kennedy in 1960, Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996.
Meantime, sociologist Gary Stokley, of Ruston, said the high early vote nationwide — more than 75 million as of Sunday — appears to an indicator Democrats are running strong.
Locally and statewide, early voters were predominantly Republican, female, and white — all factors some election watchers say may favor the GOP.
But the presidential race isn’t the only contest on the ballot.
Lincoln Parish voters will also help elect a congressman for the newly redrawn 4th Congressional District of which the parish is now a part.
Voters will pick between two Republicans: Incumbent Mike Johnson, from Bossier Parish, and challenger Joshua Morott, from Vernon Parish.
Johnson, who’s also U. S. House speaker, is seeking his fifth term. Morott is a first-time candidate.
Johnson, who made a campaign stop in Lincoln Parish on Saturday, has been on the road nationwide campaigning for Trump and trying to keep the GOP’s thin majority in the House.
Lincoln Parish became part of the 4th District when the Louisiana Legislature voted for a remap plan that intentionally protected Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and 5th District Congresswoman Julia Letlow who sits on the House Appropriations Committee.
The 4th District covers part of Northwest Louisiana and a chunk of the southwestern part of the state.
As to the lone state constitutional amendment on the ballot, it seeks to have federal money Louisiana gets from alternative energy production dedicated to the Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund, where the funds can only be used for projects aimed at safeguarding the coastal area.
According to the nonpartisan Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, money in the trust fund pays for barrier island restoration, diversion projects, flood risk reduction efforts such as levees, floodgates and pump stations, marsh creation and other work aimed at safeguarding Louisiana’s residents and businesses along the coast.
