Louisiana governor suspends U.S. House primaries by executive order, voiding ~42,000 cast ballots

On April 30, 2026 — the day after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais striking down Louisiana's congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander — Gov. Jeff Landry signed Executive Order 26-038 suspending only the state's closed-party primary elections for U.S. House seats. The order, issued under R.S. 18:401.1 following the Secretary of State's certification of an "electoral emergency," cancelled the U.S. House primary scheduled for May 16 and the runoff scheduled for June 27, deferring them to July 15 or a later date set by the Legislature. Early voting for the May 16 primary had been set to begin May 2, two days after the suspension, and absentee ballots had already been mailed.

The suspension was selective in two ways. First, it applied only to the six U.S. House races; every other contest on the May 16 ballot — including the state's first closed-party U.S. Senate primary — proceeded on schedule. Second, ballots were not reprinted: the U.S. House races remained on voters' ballots on May 16, but Secretary of State Nancy Landry confirmed that "any votes cast in those races will not be counted." By early May the Secretary of State's office had already received roughly 42,000 absentee ballots, voided for the affected races. The April 30 press release framed the order as a step taken to "uphold the rule of law while giving the Legislature the time it needs to pass a fair and lawful congressional map"; in practice the suspension created the window in which the Republican-controlled legislature would begin advancing a new mid-decade map that eliminates one of the state's two majority-Black congressional districts.

At least four legal challenges — two in state court, two in federal court — were filed in the first week of May; state courts denied initial TROs, with at least one judge ordering further briefing toward a preliminary injunction. Opposition was not strictly partisan. Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy publicly criticized the order, and primary-day reporting from New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette described sample-ballot mismatches, missing state constitutional amendments on some ballots, and a surge of confused-voter calls to the state Democratic Party. The Callais ruling itself is recordable as a separate event attributable to the Supreme Court; this entry concerns Landry's executive response — an in-progress election halted by the executive for the U.S. House races alone, with ballots already in voters' hands and tens of thousands of returned absentees rendered uncounted for those contests.