NorthStar News & Analysis Editorial

We Must Prepare for November's Election Now

The presidential election is 11 months from now, and The NorthStar News & Analysis will feature articles each month until November to encourage African-American men to register to vote and to register others to vote. NorthStar will also publish articles detailing the issues black men may face when we attempt to register.

NorthStar News & Analysis is taking this step to remind black men they no longer can avoid the challenges we face.

In 2008, we helped to elect Barack Obama president, but two years later, too many of us sat on our hands and did not vote in the 2010 mid-term elections.

As a result, Republican/Tea Party members took over the U.S. House of Representatives and many of the nation's governorships and state legislatures.  The Republican/Tea Party Congress has made it extremely difficult for President Obama to lead.

In addition, once in power, Republicans/Tea Party members did not waste any time passing new state laws intended to prevent us from voting. Take for example South Carolina, a state President Obama won in 2008 with a huge black voter turnout. South Carolina voters in 2010 elected Republican Nikki Haley governor.  Backed by a Republican majority in the state legislature, Gov. Haley signed a bill requiring voters to produce a state-issued photo identification card in order to cast a ballot.

The U.S. justice Department, however, refused to back the legislation, because if enacted, it would have prevented large number of African Americans from voting.

What happened in South Carolina is not an isolated incident. Other states have passed similar laws to disenfranchise 5 million voters nationwide in the 2012 national elections.

Following the 2008 election, we claimed victory, but the celebration should have lasted only five minutes because we have to fight the same battles over again in addition to new ones.

In 2008, 68.8 percent of registered black women voted. It was the first time in the nation's history black women cast more ballots than white women and white men, according to Pew Research Center. As a group, black men came in fourth. Some 60.7 percent of registered black men voted. This will not be good enough for the 2012 election. Black men must vote in record numbers to show our strength because excuses are no longer acceptable.