Thread: Outsize Portion of Blacks Are Casting Early Ballots

Outsize Portion of Blacks Are Casting Early Ballots - WSJ.com


OCTOBER 22, 2008
Outsize Portion of Blacks Are Casting Early Ballots
By ALEX ROTH
ATLANTA -- Lorene Smith was in her twenties when she marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She witnessed first-hand all kinds of history-book images -- the fire hoses, police dogs and flailing billy clubs.

Now, at 65, she has graying hair and a bad back that prevents her from standing too long. She is taking no chances with a ballot she once believed could never be cast -- a vote for an African-American presidential candidate. "We gonna have two little black girls in the White House running up and down the hallways to find their dog," she said as she voted Tuesday.

Americans are voting early in large numbers this year -- and African-Americans in several states are turning out in disproportionate numbers. Some fear that polling places in predominantly black neighborhoods will be overwhelmed by a record turnout on Election Day. Others are voting early to be certain the chance to elect the first black U.S. president doesn't slip away.

In Georgia, where early voting began on Sept. 22, African-Americans account for 29% of active voters but have so far made up nearly 36% of about 758,000 early voters. By comparison, African-Americans represented 25% of the overall turnout in 2004.

In Florida, African-Americans accounted for 21% of ballots cast Monday even though they make up 13% of voters. In North Carolina, African-Americans accounted for 33% of ballots cast as of Monday even though they make up 21% of voters.

New registrations, due partly to excitement over the candidacy of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and a voter-registration drive by his campaign, are driving much of the higher participation. In Georgia, nearly 165,000 blacks joined the rolls this year, up from 129,878 in 2004. While black women voters outnumber black men, this year more black men registered than black women.

There was a sense of history among early voters who stood in line Tuesday for as long as 90 minutes at the Fulton County Registration and Election headquarters in downtown Atlanta. The building is less than two miles from Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King preached and planned the civil-rights movement. Twenty miles east is Stone Mountain, the birthplace of the modern Ku Klux Klan.

During the lunch rush at the polls, the line stretched out of the building and onto the sidewalk. The majority of people waiting to vote were black. "I didn't think it would happen in my lifetime," 54-year-old truck driver David McIntosh said of Sen. Obama's candidacy.

Mr. McIntosh said when he was a child, his parents used to raise bail money every time they decided to drive the 75 miles from Atlanta to Athens, Ga., to visit Mr. McIntosh's grandparents. They feared they would be stopped and jailed somewhere along the route no matter how slowly or carefully they drove, he recalled.

"America will never be the same after this election, whether Obama wins or loses," he added.

Veleter Mazyck, who is black, had never before voted early in an election. She began to talk softly as she spoke about her dead father, who "would have been thunderstruck" by the thought of a black president.

Like many other black voters on Tuesday, Ms. Mazyck, a lawyer, insisted she wasn't necessarily voting for Mr. Obama because he was black but rather because he was the better candidate.

"The fact that the most qualified candidate happens to be African-American is just an incredible thing, a truly historic moment," she said.

Originally Posted by maniclion

I'm voting for his white half.....just because I doubt many others are....

I bet he's hung like the white half.