The line at the North Dade Regional Library in Miami Gardens stretched onto the sidewalk and around three corners, almost surrounding the building. I wish I could have gotten an aerial shot. Stage two of the line, after the first bend, is pictured above.
One of my biggest frustrations in observing and working in elections in Florida since I moved here in 1997 has been the inconsistency of the black vote, which turned out in great numbers in 2000, only to be so discouraged by the outcome, that the numbers dwindled every election thereafter. This August, the primary election saw county-wide turnout in Miami-Dade and Broward, the biggest Democratic strongholds and largest black voter bases, stall at pathetic 6-10 point rates.
Not anymore.
This election has energized black voters (including African-Americans and Caribban-Americans) like nothing I've ever seen. The lines are exaggerated, the people happy to be there. It's an incredible outpouring unlike anything I've ever seen. Ever. It's actually moving, to see so many people pouring their hopes and dreams into this election, and to be even a small part of this history-making event. And make no mistake, the time that folks are spending in line is making a difference:
Through Thursday, Democrats cast 46 percent of the 3.4 million early and absentee votes in Florida, while Republicans cast 38 percent.
That's a big shift since 2004, when Democrats were outvoted 44 percent to 41 percent by Republicans in early and absentee ballots, according to a study of Florida voting data.
The recent Democratic gains have been most pronounced in early voting, where Democrats have outnumbered Republicans by 432,000 out of nearly two million voters.
Black voters have made the difference, accounting for 16 percent of the early and absentee voters so far -- with 86 percent of them registered Democrats. In 2004, black turnout for early and absentee voting was a bit more than 10 percent of the total.
Black turnout has been especially high in the state's urban areas. In Broward County, blacks accounted for 39 percent of all early voters at the polls through Thursday; in Miami-Dade County, it was 30 percent. In Orange County, 30 percent of all voters were black; in Duval County, it was 36 percent.
And it's not just black voters. Hispanic voters are also trending Obama (as are a strong, 40-plus share of urban and suburban white voters). On Hispanics, campaign manager David Plouffe says:
''We're doing very well with Puerto Rican voters, Colombian voters. We're doing, I think, surprisingly well with younger Cuban voters,'' Plouffe said in a conference call with reporters Friday. ``We think we're going to carry the Hispanic vote in Florida if the trend lines continue.''
Dario Moreno, a pollster with Florida International University's Metropolitan Center, said Plouffe's description of the Hispanic voting bloc is in line with a poll released this week showing that Obama leads McCain by 20 percentage points among non-Cuban Hispanics and was slightly ahead among Cuban Americans under 45.
More on the Hispanic vote in Florida here. And another note on the black vote from the NY Times:
Growing up in St. Louis in the 1950s and ’60s, Deddrick Battle came to believe that the political process was not for people like him — a struggling black man whose vote, he was convinced, surely would not count for much of anything. The thought became ingrained as an adult, almost like common sense.
But a month ago, at age 55, Mr. Battle registered to vote for the first time.
“This is huge,” Mr. Battle, a janitor, said after his overnight shift cleaning a movie theater. “This is bigger than life itself. When I was coming up, I always thought they put in who they wanted to put in. I didn’t think my vote mattered. But I don’t think that anymore.”
Across the country, black men and women like Mr. Battle who have long been disaffected, apolitical, discouraged or just plain bored with politics say they have snapped to attention this year, according to dozens of interviews conducted in the last several days in six states. They are people like Percy Matthews of the South Side of Chicago, a 25-year-old who did vote once but whose experience was so forgettable that he cannot recall with certainty whom he cast a ballot for or even what year it was. Now an enthusiastic Democrat, he says the old days are gone.
And Shandell Wilcox, 29, who registered to vote in Jacksonville, Fla., when she was 18, then proceeded to ignore every election other than the current one. She voted for the first time on Wednesday.
Over and again, first-time and relatively new voters like Mr. Matthews and Ms. Wilcox, far past the legal voting age, said they were inspired by the singularity of the 2008 election and the power of Mr. Obama’s magnetism. Many also said they were loath to miss out on their part in writing what could be a new chapter of American history — the chance to vote for a black president.
Of course, the most wonderful thing about the Obama campaign is, to quote Bill Clinton, its diversity. This isn't just a movement of black people, but of Americans of all backgrounds, pulling together for a single goal. The increae in black turnout is simply symbolic of the power of the idea of change, and how it can bring people back into the process no matter how long they've felt alienated from it.
And speaking of the campaign, Deval Patrick came down today, and he visited three polling sites and a church in South Florida. The Massachusetts governor is a very nice guy, very down to earth. He's Harvard class of (no comment,) and we chatted about his living in Dunster House (I was Cabot.) Great guy, and he got to see firsthand the incredibly long lines in predominantly African-American and one Caribbean-centric site.
Gov. Deval Patrick addresses a crowd standing behind stage one of the line at North Dade Library. Pictured here is the part of the line that extended immediately outside the door of the library.
Gov. Patrick (right) waits to speak as Miami Gardens Mayor Shirley Gibson addresses the crowd from her crutches. Beside her is Commissioner Barbara Jordan, whose district includes Miami Gardens. Two of the most outstanding politicians, and best women politicians, out there, in my opinion.
The Huffpo was there in the form of a guy named John Hood, who filed this report:
MIAMI--Pulling up to the North Dade Regional Library in the inner city suburb of Miami Gardens for one of Florida's numerous early voter rallies, the first thing that strikes you is the line of early voters itself. Not just any line, mind you, but a line that begins at the library doors, folds in two, covers the parking lot, stretches out to the sidewalk, then snakes around a very large block. We're talking thousands here. Literally. All of whom who've come to exercise their right to vote -
Beyond the length of the line though, what might even be more striking is the excitement, which is as palpable as the sun is hot and high. Picture the biggest block party you can imagine, throw in a neighborhood-sized backyard BBQ, a county fair, and a traveling carnival, and you'll get half the idea of the energy of this rally, as well as the cross-section of those in attendance. Young toughs and dressed-up grannies, college students and their proud parents, single mothers, single fathers, entire families, in collars of blue and white, not only having the time of their lives, but having it on behalf of what all would agree was the most important election of their lifetime.
In the thick of it all is Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, here in town at the request of the presidential candidate himself. People receive Patrick with so much warmth it's almost as if he was their governor, and not someone else's. And in many respects he is, not simply because of race, but because of the bootstraps, but because of the example he's set for everyone. And, of course, because Patrick, like Obama, represents a sea change in America, a sea change that everyone here is a part of. ...
Read the rest here. And now for a little video entertainment:
Apparently, Charlie Crist's decision to extend early voting came after he got a letter from the nine Democrats in the Florida Congressional delegation, though I'm told the state party and statewide elected officials also put pressure on him. Jeb Bush used a similar order to keep polls open after voting problems broke out in 2002 when the second or third iteration of new voting machines was being implemented in the state.
Not everybody is happy about the decision. Take this guy:
"He just blew Florida for John McCain," one plugged in Florida Republican just told me.
The "me" in this case is not me, of course, it's Politico's Ben Smith. So, why so glum, Mr. Republican? (who is apparently the former state party chairman...) The polls, for one thing:
Barack Obama is leading Republican presidential rival John McCain in two battleground states, Florida and Ohio, where voters have more confidence in his ability to handle the troubled economy, a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.
... In Florida, a state that was considered a likely win for Republicans not long ago, McCain is trailing, 50% to 43%.
In both states, Obama, a Democrat, has opened commanding leads over McCain among women, young people, first-time voters and blacks and other minorities.
A New York Times analysis finds a massive, multi-state voter purge going on, which may violate federal law...
Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.
The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run.
Still, because Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, any heightened screening of new applications may affect their party’s supporters disproportionately. The screening and trimming of voter registration lists in the six states — Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina — could also result in problems at the polls on Election Day: people who have been removed from the rolls are likely to show up only to be challenged by political party officials or election workers, resulting in confusion, long lines and heated tempers.
Some states allow such voters to cast provisional ballots. But they are often not counted because they require added verification.
Although much attention this year has been focused on the millions of new voters being added to the rolls by the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama, there has been far less notice given to the number of voters being dropped from those same rolls.
So what's behind this? The Orwellian "Help America Vote Act," pushed through by a Republican congress to satisfy the GOP's constant need to pretend there is massive voter fraud going on in Democratic strongholds -- a mania that was also behind the firing of U.S. attorneys unwilling to embark on Karl Rove inspired witch hunts.
The Times' article takes a while to get to Florida, where our Republican Secretary of State, Kurt Browning, is having the 67 supervisors of elections across the state enforce a 2006 law that sifts voter registrations through the Social Security database, as well as state driver's license records. Initially, there were at least 16,000 people who were stricken from the rolls due to our "no match, no vote," law, though most were restored after a court order last December. Now that the order has been set aside, the Sunshine State purge is back on, and we simply don't yet know how many will face problems on Election Day.
More from the Times' story:
The six states seem to be in violation of federal law in two ways. Some are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.
Some of the states are improperly using Social Security data to verify registration applications for new voters.
In addition to the six swing states, three more states appear to be violating federal law. Alabama and Georgia seem to be improperly using Social Security information to screen registration applications from new voters. And Louisiana appears to have removed thousands of voters after the federal deadline for taking such action.
Under federal law, election officials are supposed to use the Social Security database to check a registration application only as a last resort, if no record of the applicant is found on state databases, like those for driver’s licenses or identification cards.
The requirement exists because using the federal database is less reliable than the state lists, and is more likely to incorrectly flag applications as invalid. Many state officials seem to be using the Social Security lists first.
In the year ending Sept. 30, election officials in Nevada, for example, used the Social Security database more than 740,000 times to check voter files or registration applications and found more than 715,000 nonmatches, federal records show. Election officials in Georgia ran more than 1.9 million checks on voter files or voter registration applications and found more than 260,000 nonmatches.
Officials of the Social Security Administration, presented with those numbers, said they were far too high to be cases where names were not in state databases. They said the data seem to represent a violation of federal law and the contract the states signed with the agency to use the database.
Greg Palast was on with Stephanie Miller this morning talking about his and Robert Kennedy Jr.'s new comic handbook, "Steal Back Your Vote." Download it and use it -- take it with you to the polls. And if you're in Florida, where I am: VOTE EARLY. Using early vote is the best way to find out if you have a problem, while giving yourself time to fix it, rather than being pushed to vote on a provisional ballot on November 4th, which has less chance of being counted.
Everyone is paying close attention to the presidential race, but Democrats should also feel good about their chances of picking up two, and at the outside, perhaps all three contested Congressional seats in South Florida, too. Why? New voters, whom you might, from here on in, refer to as "straight ticket" voters.
Miami-Dade and Broward Counties have added200,000 and 300,000 new voters to the rolls since the 2004 election, respectively, not including the last-minute October rush. Moreover, Democrats are out-registering republicans by 60/40 or better rates, and registering many more young voters, so that in in both counties, Democrats now out-number Republicans by around 200,000 voters. Add to that the more than 200,000 Independant voters in Broward and more than 275,000 in Dade, and the polls showing indies leaning increasingly toward Obama and the Democrats, and you've got a cyclone whose current path has it aiming directly at heart of the GOP.
Now for the important part: new voters are more than likely NOT politically conversant. They no nothing about Raul Martinez's past brushes with the law, nor do they have a longtime affinity for the Cuba-centric politics of the Diaz Balarts. They are paying attention, but mostly to the presidential race. Therefore the Balart attack ads are probably wasted on them. What most new voters know, particularly at the younger end of the spectrum, is that a Democrat registered them, they want to vote for Democrat Barack Obama (and that's why many of them registered to begin with,) and they are part of the wave that is poised to was Republicans out of the White House and Congress so that "change" can begin.
Even in a less toxic election year, new voters tend to be straight ticket voters, and once they start with Obama, most will work their way through the ballot voting D down the line. That's great news for the Democratic Congressional candidates, and for Democrats running for the state house. Of course, straight ticket voting won't help the judicial candidates, and it won't help people decode the legalese that the various statewide and countywide amendments are written in. But at the end of the day, I'd feel pretty good if I were a Democrat running for Congress this year.
“A New Mexico lawyer who pushed to oust U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was an officer of a nonprofit group that aided Republican candidates in 2006 by pressing for tougher voter identification laws…
“That strategy, which presidential advisor Karl Rove alluded to in an April 2006 speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association, sought to scrutinize voter registration records, win passage of tougher ID laws and challenge the legitimacy of voters considered likely to vote Democratic.
“Public records show that the two nonprofits were active in at least nine states. They hired high-priced lawyers to write court briefs, issued news releases declaring key cities 'hot spots' for voter fraud and hired lobbyists in Missouri and Pennsylvania to win support for photo ID laws. In each of those states, the center released polls that it claimed found that minorities prefer tougher ID laws. With $1.5 million in combined funding, the two nonprofits attracted some powerful volunteers and a cadre of GOP-allied attorneys. Of the 15 individuals affiliated with the two groups, at least seven are members of the Republican National Lawyers Association, and half a dozen have worked for either one Bush election campaign or for the Republican National Committee…”
