Election Law Change May Help Cassidy

When Louisiana's Senator Bill Cassidy cast his decisive procedural vote to send Bobby Kennedy to the full Senate for confirmation as Trump's secretary for Health and Human Services, I took some solace in the knowledge that I could cast a meaningful vote against him in the next election.

Until very recently, Louisiana used a "jungle primary" system for its elections, meaning that all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, faced each other in an initial vote. Any candidate receiving a majority in this "jungle primary" won the election. Otherwise, the top two vote-getters would face off in a deciding election later.

Now, for certain elections, including for U.S. Senate, this system has been replaced by a confusing and expensive primary method designed to allow the two main parties to winnow their fields first, with independent voters having to pick a party for the duration of that election, if they want to participate in the primaries at all.

It is easy to see how the old system might have made it easy to defeat Cassidy, who violated his Hippocratic Oath when he rubber-stamped Trump's mindless decision to put an anti-vaccination lunatic in charge of the medical system and government-funded biotechnology research. Cassidy, who voted to impeach Trump back in 2016, was certain to face a MAGA challenger. With the vote split, a Democrat with decent independent support could more easily win Louisiana's Senate seat, sending a clear message to any Republican still capable of hearing one.

Now? Cassidy, who was already facing a MAGA challenger, is now also facing a second one endorsed by Trump himself, but this will no longer hurt the Republicans' chance of undeservedly holding this seat. Whoever wins that primary will be facing the Democrat alone in a state that Trump carried by 22 points, and in which anti-vaccine sentiment is higher than in many others.

That race was uphill for the Democrats to begin with, but it now looks impossible. I will cast a protest vote for the Democrat, anyway.

-- CAV