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Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards has postponed his state's elections for a second time due to the threat of community spread coronavirus at the polls, according to an announcement Tuesday from Edwards' office.
Originally, the presidential primary was scheduled to take place in April, but Edwards pushed the primary back to June. Now, those elections are expected to occur in July. General elections in Louisiana, originally planned for April, are not expected to take place until August.
Edwards' postponement order came at the behest of Louisiana Secretary of State R. Kyle Ardoin, who certified to Edwards that a "state of emergency exists that would affect the electoral process," according to the proclamation.
Newsweek reached out to the Republican Party of Louisiana and the Louisiana Democratic Party for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
"The Secretary of State is presently developing a plan for how to move forward with the election," Edwards said at a Tuesday news briefing. Secretary Ardoin was expected to present that plan to state legislators on Wednesday.
At a March news conference, Ardoin said the original decision to postpone Louisiana's elections derived from "an absolute abundance of caution for Louisiana's voters, voting officials and the general public as a whole."
According to recent data, Louisiana has reported 21,518 positive cases of coronavirus. Edwards announced Tuesday a death toll of 129 individuals, the highest number reported in a day. However, due to delays in reporting coronavirus deaths to the state, all of those deaths may not have occurred within a 24-hour period.
"They are our neighbors, friends and coworkers," Edwards said in a Tuesday statement. "They are more than just a number on a report or graph, and as our fellow Louisianans, we all grieve alongside their families."
In spite of the numbers, Edwards said during an April news conference that Louisiana may be starting to flatten the curve.
"We've bought ourselves more time that allows us to continue to surge our medical capacity and continue to flatten the curve," Edwards said. "And all of this stuff works in concert. So we've got to keep doing everything that we've been doing to have the best possible outcome."
However, Edwards warned Monday that there were "too many people moving around" and another upswing in cases could be on the horizon as a result.
"All it takes to have a spike in cases and go back in the other direction is for too many people to violate the order," Edwards said, "too much social contact to spread this disease. So I'm asking everyone to do better."
While Louisiana is under a stay-at-home order until the end of April, Edwards said it was still "too early to know" if the order would be extended.
"We will be announcing later this week an economic resiliency recovery task force that we are going to stand up here in Louisiana that will advise me and local officials as well," Edwards said Tuesday.
