JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, told black students at a rally at Edward Waters College Saturday that they shouldn’t view voting simply as a matter of individual responsibility in this presidential election.
For blacks, it ought to be a family matter as well, she said.
“As we stand here now, there are American citizens in Iraq who are fighting a war without a plan to win the peace…to stop it, we need to join the ‘family plan.’” Jones said.
“The family plan’ is getting everyone in your family to vote…It’s like having a [family] health care plan and a [family] dental plan…now we’re having a [family] voting plan.”
Jones, as well as other Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members and members of the Democratic National Committee, brought a variety of such messages to black people in Jacksonville over the weekend as part of a bus tour that ends Tuesday in Miami and is aimed at bolstering black voter turnout throughout Florida.
They were also joined by actress Alfre Woodard and television stars James McDaniel of “NYPD Blue” and Victoria Rowell of “The Young and The Restless” – who showed up at a prayer breakfast on Saturday and for a party that night..
“I’ve been involved in every election since I was conscious of elections,” Woodard told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “That was part of being a family. That was part of what we did. After the blatant, awful, shameful disenfranchisement of blacks here in 2000, there was no other place for me to be.”
“Right is right and wrong is wrong,” McDaniel said. “To look back and say that I wasn’t a part of this if things go south would be hard for me to live down.”
Jacksonville holds special significance for the CBC “Get Out the Vote” tour in Florida.
In 2000, more than 27,000 votes were thrown out in this city because of spoiled ballots or other technicalities. Most of the discarded votes came from majority black precincts – and that snafu, among many others, helped George W. Bush win Florida by just 537 votes – a victory that put him in the White House.
It also prompted claims of black voter disenfranchisement, a charge that still lingers with many blacks.
That’s why CBC members such as U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., whose Jacksonville district included most of the precincts with the discarded votes in 2000, and others are not only urging black people in Florida to see to it that their family members vote, but to also take advantage of early voting.
Early voting is a process that allows people to show up at an elections office and vote two weeks before the Nov. 2 election. That way, if a problem arises, such as a signature that doesn’t match, for example, or any other technicality, it can be straightened out.
Florida is one of 32 states that allow early voting.
“Essentially, our message is about voter education, voter turnout,” Brown said. “But if you show up on Nov. 2, at 6:45 pm, and there’s a problem, then there won’t be much that you can do.”
But early voting has already become the center of a controversy in Duval County, in which Jacksonville is located. With 841 square miles and 500,000 registered voters, it is the largest county in Florida, but has just one site for early voting – the office of the county’s elections supervisor. Brown, as well as DNC officials and others, are urging the state to open more sites – although elections officials say that it is too late for them to submit the security plans that are required by law for them to do so.
Yet Lottie Shackelford, vice-president of the DNC, said that by stressing early voting, as well as Bush’s dismal record regarding the issues that dog black people, Democrats hope to stave off a repeat of 2000 voting debacle by encouraging black people to vote in large numbers.
“If we really turn out the vote in overwhelming numbers, then the issues we faced in 2000 are irrelevant,” Shackelford said. “We need to make people understand that this isn’t just an exercise in responsibility, but a duty.”
