| Good Morning, A federal district judge on Wednesday will reorganize Louisiana voters into districts that give minorities a better opportunity to elect two of their own to the U.S. Congress instead of only one. U.S. District Shelly Dick, of Baton Rouge, ruled June 6 that the maps approved by the majority Republican legislature failed to meet the standards of the federal Voting Rights Act thereby diluting African American voices in the running of government. Dick found that the Legislature packed Black voters into one of Louisiana’s six congressional districts and in the other five cracked Black neighborhoods in a way that scattered African American voters in overwhelmingly White districts. However, enough Black voting age people live close enough together along the Mississippi River and Baton Rouge that two districts could be drawn with modest majorities of minority voters. Louisiana’s white voters have never voted in enough numbers to elect a Black candidate to Congress. Legislative leaders counter that their maps drawn a few months ago – with five overwhelming White districts and one Black – were just tweaks to the voting districts approved a decade ago. The new maps received two-thirds majority support when lawmakers in March overrode the veto of Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards. Therefore, Judge Dick overstepped her federal authority on a state function by improperly finding that the Voting Rights Act standards had been breached. A 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel is scheduled on July 8 to consider whether legislators did or didn’t meet the standards that invoke the Voting Rights Act protections that allow a federal trial judge to draw the election maps. Though expected, the U.S. Supreme Court Friday overturned the right to abortion spelled out in Roe v. Wade and cast the nation into considerable turmoil. Louisiana has a “trigger law” that automatically bans pregnancy-ending procedures upon high court negation of the nearly half-century-old Roe precedent. On Friday, the Louisiana Department of Health sent letters to the three clinics operating in the state telling to immediately cease providing abortions. By Monday, Orleans Civil District Court Judge Robin Giarrusso issued a temporary restraining order barring the state from enforcing the trigger law. That allowed the clinics to reopen. Judge Giarrusso’s ruling was similar to those in other states that also have trigger laws. Louisiana’s top school board approved waivers for another 900 high school seniors who failed to meet graduation requirements despite criticism that the second round of leniency waters down the state's education standards. The two votes mean that all of the roughly 2,300 students who failed to qualify for diplomas this year now have new options to do so. Backers said the move made sense for students in 25 parishes who endured hardships sparked by Hurricane Ida. State rules require seniors to meet modest benchmarks on end-of-course exams, and fulfill other requirements, to earn a standard diploma. On Tuesday, the public can get hands-on experience with different types of devices voters will soon be using to cast ballots in the future – instead of the 10,000 or so antiquated and hard to repair voting machines now used in Louisiana. Nine vendors are demonstrating the different systems. Some handle hand-marked ballots. Others are touch-screen computers that print out the results on special paper. Both systems feed the paper ballots into scanners that count the votes and store the paper ballots in a secured vault. The demonstrations are open to the public Tuesday at the Capitol Park Museum in Baton Rouge. On Wednesday, the Voting System Commission will decide what attributes they want to see on in the state’s new voting system. As always, check throughout the day for the latest Louisiana political news at theadvocate.com/politics or NOLA.com/politics and on Twitter at @MarkBallardCNB, @tegbridges, @samkarlin, @WillSentell. Here are a dozen articles, commentaries and editorials that will catch you up for the week to come. One last item: Thank you to our subscribers. Your support means a great deal to us. If you're not yet a subscriber, we’ve got a special offer you can check out here. – Mark Ballard | 