East Baton Rouge Parish Registrar of Voters Steve Raborn is announcing the temporary relocation of early voting from his branch office located at 11010 Coursey Boulevard during the upcoming early voting period. From October 16th through October 27th, the Registrar of Voters office will instead hold early voting at Forest Community Park, 13900 South Harrell’s Ferry Road, and at four other locations in East Baton Rouge Parish.
The relocation of the Coursey Boulevard office is necessary to provide sufficient social-distanced spacing and capacity for the number of voters who are expected to vote early in the presidential election at one of the busiest early-voting sites in the parish.
Raborn determined that the existing office is unsafe and inadequate to serve a high volume of early voters during the current pandemic. State statute allows the registrar to temporarily relocate a branch office during or following a gubernatorially declared state of emergency if the office is destroyed, inaccessible, or unsafe. Forest Community Park provides a much larger facility with better parking and will allow the registrar to provide an early-voting environment that is safe and compliant with social distancing requirements and capacity limitations.
While it is the smallest early-voting site in East Baton Rouge Parish, the Coursey Boulevard office typically serves the second-highest number of early voters in major elections, second only to the State Archives Building on Essen Lane. In the November 2019 election for governor, the Coursey Boulevard office served a peak of 2,300 early voters in a single day, and a total of 13,294 early voters over the early voting period in that election.
The Coursey Boulevard office will remain open during the early voting period for other voter registration business and hand-delivery of absentee ballots, but in-person early voting will not be available at that location.
With the temporary relocation of the Coursey Boulevard site to Forest Community Park, registered voters of East Baton Rouge Parish may vote early in-person at any of the five following locations in the upcoming election:
- City Hall: 222 St. Louis Street, Room 607, Baton Rouge
- State Archives Building: 3851 Essen Lane, Baton Rouge
- Forest Community Park: 13900 S. Harrell’s Ferry Road, Baton Rouge
- Baker Motor Vehicle Building: 2250 Main Street, Baker
- Central Branch Library: 11260 Joor Road, Central