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16 Responses to “Georgia’s 500,000 unregistered Black voters”

1. Hugh Says:
   May 17th, 2008 at 5:24 am

   And LeftHook, just why do we have 500,000 unregistered Black voters at this stage of the game? That doesn’t speak well for their awareness or contribution to our society, does it?! And while I agree with you that Barrack Hussein Obama will change that, what does that mean? I suggest Blacks are much more race conscious than whites and they are interested in naturally cleaving to one of their own racial family. Shame Whites don’t understand that concept, as it truly is basic to survival and if you have looked at recent projections, Whites are on their way out! Do you think the Blacks will continue on with the space program and other technological (and other high) accomplishments?! You do think we are all equal, don’t you?! (ps: I don’t!)

2. Bill Says:
   May 17th, 2008 at 6:10 am

   This is one area I agree with Neal Boortz. We need fewer voters not more. Conservatives generally don’t spend resources going out to register voters or take them to the polls in buses or anything else. The Democratic party (not all Democrats of course) is now the party for lowering standards to include illegal aliens, convicted felons, and yes even people who can’t read. At the same time I hope Republicans can get as far away from racial politics as possible and welcome successful Americans into some big tent conservatism.

3. Bill Says:
   May 17th, 2008 at 6:17 am

   Of course nobody wants to see disenfranchised voters. And the “Paulistas” have joined with a significant number of Democrats in recognizing the complete and utter hijacking of our electoral process with computerized voting and other shenanigans by the neocons. Areas like this are where “real deal” conservatives part company with some of the status quo. Lucky for conservatism, we’re all not bought and paid for with a bunch of damn talking points.

4. JohnKonop Says:
   May 17th, 2008 at 7:24 am

   I think Bob Barr being in the race helps Obama.

5. JohnKonop Says:
   May 17th, 2008 at 7:57 am

   In the South, a Force to Challenge the G.O.P.

   NYT-The sharp surge in black turnout that Senator Barack Obama has helped to generate in recent primaries and Congressional races could signal a threat this fall to the longtime Republican dominance of the South, according to politicians and voting experts.

   Should Mr. Obama become the Democratic nominee, he would still have to struggle for white swing voters in the South and in border states like West Virginia, where he lost decisively to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Tuesday’s presidential primary. In West Virginia, where more than three-fourths of white voters chose Mrs. Clinton, 20 percent of the white voters said the race of the candidate mattered in their choice.

   But in Southern states with large black populations, like Alabama, Mississippi and Virginia, an energized black electorate could create a countervailing force, particularly if conservative white voters choose not to flock to Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, predicts “the largest black turnout in the history of the United States” this fall if Mr. Obama is the nominee.

   To hold these states, Republicans may have to work harder than ever. Already, turnout in Democratic primaries this year has substantially exceeded Republican turnout in states like Arkansas, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

   Some analysts suggest that North Carolina and Virginia may even be within reach for the Democratic nominee, and they point to the surprising result in a Congressional special election in Mississippi this week as an indicator of things to come.

   With the strong support of black voters, a conservative white Democrat, Travis W. Childers, scored an upset victory in that race, in a district held by Republicans since 1995. Kelvin Buck, a black state representative who helped the Childers campaign, said he saw a “level of enthusiasm and energy” that he had not seen before from black voters — significantly motivated, he said, by a recent Republican anti-Obama campaign.

   The numbers appear to bear that out. In one black precinct in the town of Amory, Miss., the number of voters nearly doubled, to 413, from the Congressional election in 2006, and this for a special election with nothing else on the ballot. Meanwhile, in a nearby white precinct, the number of voters dropped by nearly half.

   A similar increase has been evident in Southern states with presidential primaries this year. In South Carolina, the black vote in the primary more than doubled from 2004, to 295,000, according to exit poll estimates. In Georgia, it rose to 536,000 from 289,000.

   One expert on African-American politics, David A. Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, called those numbers “almost astounding.” Black turnout also shot up in states like Maryland, Virginia and Louisiana, even after Hurricane Katrina had driven many Louisianians out of state.

   Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “This is going to encourage the purplization of red states. It’s going to make red states purplish over time.”

   Black voters made up a larger percentage of Democratic primary voters this year in several states than in the last two presidential election years, according to exit polls conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the National Election Pool of television networks and The Associated Press this year and in 2004, and by the Voter News Service in 2000. In Maryland, for example, black voters rose to 47 percent of the total, up from 35 percent in 2004 and 28 percent in 2000.

   Ronald W. Walters, a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, who worked for the 1984 presidential campaign of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, said of Mr. Obama, “He’s generated a tremendous force in American political culture outside the electoral system.”

   Still, it would take a shift in the electoral dynamic — a substantial stumble by John McCain, for instance — for Mr. Obama to put in play a state like Mississippi, where whites gave John Kerry only about 15 percent of their vote in 2004 and where voting in presidential elections is perhaps more racially polarized than anywhere else in the nation. Even with a heavy black turnout, Mr. Bositis estimated, Mr. Obama would have to increase his white percentage by at least a third, to about 20 percent, to win the state.

   “I don’t anticipate him winning Mississippi,” Mr. Bositis said, even though it has a higher percentage of blacks than any other state, 36 percent.

   Many of the votes on Tuesday for Mr. Childers — an anti-abortion, pro-gun-rights Democrat — were from whites who will in all likelihood pull the lever for Mr. McCain in November, analysts and voters themselves say.

   “Obama, he’s too off-the-wall,” said Chappell Sides, a white Republican-leaning voter in Yalobusha County who said he was preparing to punch the button for Mr. Childers on Tuesday. “Hillary — I thought I hated her, till Obama came along.”

   Bruce Oppenheimer, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University, said the question was not so much whether Mr. Obama would carry Mississippi as whether he would force Republicans to spend time and money in the state.

   Yet one sure lesson of the surprising Congressional result from northern Mississippi is that the use of Mr. Obama as an electoral tactic — Republicans resorted to it heavily in the contest — is at best a double-edged sword. At worst it is a guillotine for Republican candidates in areas with substantial black populations, like the Mississippi district won by Mr. Childers, where 26 percent are African-American. Indeed, Tuesday’s Mississippi vote emerged as a case study in the effects and consequences of focusing on Mr. Obama.

   “We realized the Republican machine was on the attack,” said Mr. Buck, the state representative who helped Mr. Childers. “They wanted to say he was tied to Barack Obama. The question we asked was, What’s wrong with that? We wanted to prove to them that there’s nothing wrong in Mississippi with a person being tied to Barack Obama.”

   Between an initial vote on April 22, when Mr. Childers fell just shy of getting the 50 percent he needed to win, and Tuesday’s runoff election, when he won with a decisive 54 percent, the Republican campaign to link Mr. Childers with Mr. Obama intensified, with a barrage of advertisements specifically on that theme. Perhaps not coincidentally, vote totals in counties with large black populations went up sharply between those two dates. In Marshall County, which is 48.8 percent black, the votes nearly doubled, to 5,083. In Clay County, 56.8 black, nearly 1,500 more people voted, pushing the total to 3,898.

   The attacks on Mr. Obama clearly had a galvanizing effect, local officials said. “The people I talked to said, ‘Man, I don’t like that they’re trying to use Obama against him,’ ” said Eric Powell, a black state senator who helped in voter turnout efforts. “It actually helped Travis.”

6. David O'Rear Says:
   May 17th, 2008 at 8:44 pm

   Bill,

   We need fewer voters not more.

   Actually, what we need is fewer racist idiots, not more.

   And, more patriotic Americans who believe in the ballot box, not fewer.

   And, more people willing to stand side-by-side with the American Civil Liberties Union to guarantee the right to vote is not infringed upon by racists idiots.

   Not fewer.

7. JohnKonop Says:
   May 17th, 2008 at 9:25 pm

   David

   Would you call Bill and Hillary racist?

8. Bill Says:
   May 17th, 2008 at 10:30 pm

   Perot had a good one: He said why don’t we vote on Saturday instead of tuesday? A working man is busy on Tuesday.

9. Bill Says:
   May 17th, 2008 at 10:37 pm

   Davey
   What are your standards for this “right to vote”? (and don’t evade the question, be specific) And what’s the Constitutional basis for this idea?

10. Aubrey Says:
    May 18th, 2008 at 7:47 am

    I suugest that we remove pay-roll deductions and have everyone pay taxes on a quarterly basis…and then vote on April 16th.

11. JohnKonop Says:
    May 18th, 2008 at 8:42 am

    Aubrey

    “pay taxes on a quarterly basis”

    That would be very costly for tax payers and the government.

12. Aubrey Says:
    May 18th, 2008 at 11:34 am

    Why would it cost more to tax-payers? They would see every penny they earn and then have to cut a check every quarter…just like anyone who is self-employed. Their taxes wouldn’t go up, they’d just be taken differently.

    Did you ever wonder why we use pay-roll deductions, John? When the employee never sees the money, they don’t miss it when it’s taken. This allows the gov’t to take more. If people were given every penny that they earn and then had to write a check to pay taxes, I’ll guarantee you that citizens would be bigger fans of the smaller government idea.

13. SgtMac Says:
    May 18th, 2008 at 1:35 pm

    Davey - as usual, you post things like a man with a paper butt hole.

    Hmmmm……I wonder who should be RESPONSIBLE enough to get registered to vote?

    It must be some group who goes door to door right?

    Go read the Constitution jackass. EVERY American has the right to vote. Those who choose (You know Davey….like the alleged “right” to choose) to give up that right have one and ONLY one person to blame and it isn’t anyone other than that person looking back from the mirror. If 500K people CHOOSE not to register, TOUGH BEANS!

    Stay in Hong Kong….they deserve you.

14. David O'Rear Says:
    May 18th, 2008 at 7:58 pm

    Willy,

    Don’t try to debate me on the Constitution, and, I won’t try to discuss moral ethics with you.

    You can continue to be a racist idiot, and I’ll continue to be a patriotic, ACLU card-carrying democratic American. Small “d” or big, doesn’t matter.

    = = = = = = = = = =

    Aubrey and Mr Konop

    I’ve been paying taxes on a quarterly basis for years; next installment is due June 15.

    New York Times March 31, 1 9 9 0

    YOUR MONEY: Who Must Pay Taxes Quarterly, By Barnaby J. Feder

    For most taxpayers, the moment for settling accounts with the Internal Revenue Service comes just once a year. But for the 10 percent required to estimate and pay taxes during the current year, April 16 is merely one of four deadlines - the others are the 15th of June, September and January. And with changes in the tax code brought about by the Tax Reform Act of 1986.

    More: http://tinyurl.com/5blpzo

15. Bill Says:
    May 18th, 2008 at 8:29 pm

    Davey
    If you don’t answer the question then I automatically win.

16. Aubrey Says:
    May 19th, 2008 at 7:10 am

    Yes, David, then can atest to the pain of having to watch so much of your money get redistributed. Imagine the young couple who each work retail. Let’s also imagine that they are bad with money. what kind of wake-up call would they have if they paid quarterly?

    What about the middle-class family that enjoys being able to ignore how much, exactly, they pay in taxes. What kind of wake-up call would they get if they had to pay quarterly?

    I’ve worked for myself for one year and had to pay quarterly. It wasn’t much of a wake-up for me because I knew what to expect. I think that the majority of tax-payers would be shocked.