A Court date is now set in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s race. The appeal is scheduled to get underway at 11 a.m. on Monday, December 11.
It was back on Tuesday [December 5] that retired Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Joe Bleich [brought in as an ad hoc judge] ruled in favor of Republican finalist John Nickelson. Bleich voided the election results of the November 18 run-off and ordered a new election.
The legal challenges all began after Nickelson lost to Democrat Henry Whitehorn by just a single vote. Nickelson did point out a number of irregularities in the election. So, after a partial recount resulted in the very same one-vote margin, Nickelson filed his lawsuit.
In Judge Bleich’s ruling he wrote that it “defies logic” to determine who won. In all, Bleich identified 11 votes that he says were never votes in the first place and should never have been part of the vote count. That’s when the judge called for a new trial, expected to take place in the Louisiana Primary election on March 23, 2024.
Despite Bleich's ruling, Whitehorn insists he won the race by that one vote margin, and that made him “sheriff elect.” Period. And that is after Whitehorn learned of the 11 votes that Bleich found. Shreveport attorney and political analyst Royal Alexander explains why a political candidate might keep insisting they won, when it is obvious, they did not. “I think some of that is political posturing, setting himself up to appear to the public to be in the best position for a runoff. That’s all that I can imagine because it’s not factually correct.”
![Ernie Roberson, Retired Caddo Parish Registrar from 1990-2019 - 29 years [and 3 months]](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/747ab25/2147483647/strip/true/crop/259x194+0+0/resize/840x630!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F5b%2F30%2Fc53d5caf406488cf4eda00dfb873%2Fernie-roberson.jpg)
Before Dale Sibley became the Caddo Parish Registrar, the previous registrar served for 29 years [and three months] from 1990-2019. Roberson explained that all of this talk about being the sheriff-elect and about officially winning the race (twice) is nonsense. Roberson told us the candidate cannot become the Sheriff-elect until after the Secretary of State’s office in Baton Rouge certifies the election. Only then can a candidate be declared the winner. Not Before. Roberson may have said it best when he concluded, “Henry Whitehorn can call himself anything he wants. But it does not make it the truth.”
Behind the scenes, several sources tell us they do not want their names mentioned, at all, in connection with this story or others like it, because it could disrupt their lives or even, down the road, threaten their safety. One source summed up the situation by imagining someone lighting a match only to discover the floor is covered in gasoline. The end of the remark came with the quip, “No thanks.”
