by Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Editor-in-Chief
Despite record numbers of voters who turned out during the presidential primaries last spring, eight million African Americans are still not registered to vote.
This according to Rick Wade, African American vote director for the Obama for America presidential campaign.
“Our principle focus has been a 50-state voter registration initiative. I think we all appreciate that if we increase the number of African American registered voters and then increase turnout and get people to the polls on Nov. 4, then Sen. Obama will be the next president of the United States,” Wade says.Wade explains that the eight million unregistered Black voters accounts for 32 percent of eligible Black voting population nationwide.
Read the rest of this article here.
8 comments:
It's inconceivable to me how so many people can be so apathetic about exercising their civic duty. Something so many of our people fought and died so that we could simply walk in to our designated voting poll and push a tiny little button. Some theorize that making election day a national holiday would boost voter turnout...I think NOT. But clearly we need to find a solution and we need to find it fast.
Hey Villager.
I agree totally with Blog Queen. As the saying goes, If Not Us, Who? If Not Now, When?
Blog Queen - We have about 70 days to ensure that everyone we know is registered to vote. I've added an RSS-feed to the Black bloggers that are at the DemConvention to my right-hand sidebar in the hopes that villagers will see posts there that interest them to learn more about Obama and his historic candidacy for POTUS. Time will tell... but, I agree with you -- 8 million unregistered nubians is much too many...
Wow that is amazing to me that with a black canidate people are not even thinking about registering.
I believe people dont know about how the proccess works. They might be thinking they can just walk in and vote.
Mike - We may need to use our blogs to educate our peeps on voter registration. The Proud Black Voter blog may be useful in this area as well...
They can't all be Jehovah's witnesses. We've got to do something about that.
We have got to get these numbers up, who else can we count on to get obama in office!!??
Quick & Urban Scientist - Let me know if you come up with any ideas. I would love to post some ideas on my blog ... or the Proud Black Voter blog...
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