Light Voting Spells Disaster For Black Candidates?
BY BUDDY NEVINS
Early voting in the black community is seriously lagging.
What does that mean for Kendrick Meek and the handful of black Broward judges fighting for their jobs?
Here are the totals on Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes’ website for the first week of early voting:
- African-American Library– 468
- Hollywood Branch Library– 835
- Lauderhill Mall Super Center– 419
- Main Library – Downtown Fort Lauderdale– 753
- Miramar Library– 413
- North Regional Library – BC– 789
- Northwest Regional Library– 1145
- Southwest Regional Library– 974
- Tamarac Regional Library– 1004
- West Regional Library– 966
- Weston Branch Library– 572
Total 8338
The black areas the African American Library, the Lauderhill Mall and the Miramar Library are seriously trailing voting at the NW Regional Library and Tamarac.
This means that Meek’s U. S. Senate campaign in the Democratic primary against real estate investor Jeff Green is not getting his voters to the polls. Political consultants believe that Meek needs a big win in Broward to beat Green in the rest of the state.
The lousy black community early voting also means the most solid votes for the black judges like Ken Gillespie, Elijah Williams and Mary Rudd Robinson are not voting early.
A political consultant who has worked extensively in the black community told me that early voting organizing efforts have been greatly hampered by closing the polls on Sunday.
Campaigns would work the churches and encourage parishioners to go right from services to the polls.
Although early voters can cast ballots at any polling booth in the county, it is assumed that most do so near their homes.
My biggest surprise is how light the voting is in south Broward, where the two hottest county commission races are on the ballot.
At the Hollywood Branch Library, only 835 voted despite that being the heart of the fight between Steve Geller and Sue Gunzburger.
This appears to be a failure on the part of both campaigns to get their voters to the poll early. Or voters are just fed-up with the nasty campaigning and the choices between two deeply flawed candidates.
Miramar, the center of the battle to replace retiring Commissioner Diana Wasserman-Rubin, is also voting very, very light.
August 15th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
I’m surprised Sam Fields lets you write about the judges that way.
Sam needs those Uncle Tom incumbents to make a living which is why he is having you write all your crap earlier about how badly they are needed.
Just confess Nevins. Sam pays for this website and pays you, too.
August 15th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Buddy,
The Geller campaign has not attempted to get large portions of Steve’s supporters to the Early Voting polls. We have not sent out special Early Voter mail nor made phone calls.
Many Geller volunteers and Firefighter/Afl-Cio supporters are at several Early Voting sites to greet voters who are voting early to encourage them to vote for Steve, but we are not MAKING SPECIFIC EFFORTS TO GET OUR VOTERS THERE…IT’S TOO HOT FOR TOO MANY OF THEM TO VENTURE OUT.
Hopefully August 24th will be a little cooler.
If our opponent’s campaign has been trying to get their voters to vote early then they have failed, but maybe they don’t have as many as they would like you to believe. Typical of the campaign she is running. Just ask her fellow Commissioners who will soon consider a motion made last Tuesday to remove her title of Vice-Mayor because of the “despicable” campaign she is running.
(I believe this is my third response to you posts about the Geller campaign over the past year and, as always, using my real name.)
August 16th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Unfortunately, looking at early voting sites is not a very good measure of who is voting, especially with the elimination of so many sites by the SOE.
That said, black turnout from early and absentee voting is running behind the 2008 primary. They were 19.7% of all early/absentee votes cast in the 2008 primary and to date are only 15.9% of the votes cast. Given that blacks are approximately 21% of registered voters and that they are much better at turning out the vote on election day (there were 28.4% of the votes cast on election day in the 2008 primary), I don’t think you can make the case at all that the sky is falling.
August 23rd, 2010 at 12:10 am
I took a trip to the Miramar Library on Saturday and some lady from the Sharief campaign was singing (or, better yet, harassing) the voters to vote for Sharief. I hope that all 413 voters at the Miramar Library didn’t have to go through that!
August 23rd, 2010 at 7:13 am
Frank,
I was at the Miramar library a few days supporting a candidate and voting. The woman from the Sharief campaign you are referring to has been out there the entire week harassing people and signing. In fact, I was speaking with some campaign volunteers from other races and they told me the Sharief volunteers have been starting trouble all week. A few of them have been dropping f-bombs, smoking while passing out materials, and even called a candidate gay, to encourage voters not to vote for him. However, I think the biggest turn off was watching Barbara Sharief, herself stand outside the library and fill out this woman’s sample ballot, which was then copied by two other women. It’s one thing to give an opinion or advice, another to insult the process as an elected official.