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Volume 123 No. 13
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NOVEMBER 1, 2014 - NOVEMBER 7, 2014
Community Leaders Battle Traditional Low Turnout
neighborhood where turnout often suffers. The presumptive delegates for the 40th and 45th districts, Antonio Hayes and Cory McCray respectively, have teamed up Baltimore City saw a less than 42 percent turnout during the with Baltimore City councilman Brandon Scott to implement last midterm election (2010), and with the 2014 election less a campaign that was first tried out in Colorado and focuses on than a week away, various interested parties, from community social media outreach. groups to unions to political campaigns, are working to get The campaign, called ‘Roll Up Your Sleeves and Vote,’ Baltimoreans to the polls. works in a manner similar to this summer’s viral ice bucket challenge, only instead of pouring frigid water on oneself, Tessa Hill-Aston, president of the Baltimore City NAACP, says her organization has been maximizing its limited resources persons go out and vote, write the phrase ‘I voted’ on themselves, post a picture of in order to get out the vote, it online, and challenge five with an emphasis up to now friends to get to the polls and on early voting. In addition do the same. to reaching out to churches in According to McCray, the order to get voters to the polls trio decided to pursue this last Sunday (Oct. 26), HillEarly Voting ends 8 p.m., Oct. 30 voter outreach method because Aston has been working with a team of about 10 volunteers and targeting neighborhoods in the “We realized that the first several days there was low voter turnout.” 21217 zip code such as Druid Heights and Penn North. “We just launched it yesterday (Oct. 27) morning at eleven “We are trying to get the numbers up because that has been an area that has had low voter o’clock,” said Hayes of the social media campaign, “and within the last 24 hours we’ve reached over 7,000 people who’ve turnout,” said Hill-Aston. logged into the Facebook page that we set up.” Hill-Aston has also Hayes said this weekend he and other local Democrats will teamed up with some also be using “old school” sound trucks to get the word out parents in Cherry Hill to canvass for voters in another Continued on A3
MARYLAND CONGRESSIONAL RACES
By Roberto Alejandro Special to the AFRO
House of Representatives 2nd District, Maryland C.A. Dutch Ruppersburger 3rd District, Maryland John Sarbanes 7th District, Maryland Elijah Cummings
Election 2014
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Maryland Del. Shawn Tarrant has launched a write-in campaign to retain his 40th District seat in the General Assembly, asking voters to skip the first name on the ballot, Del. Frank Conaway Jr. The decision, he said, came after residents called expressing concern about Conaway’s alleged “issues,” which were spotlighted by media coverage of more than 50 YouTube videos Conaway posted of himself giving meandering monologues on a variety of eyebrowraising topics. The videos, Tarrant said, confirmed what many already knew—that Conaway was not fit to serve. “I’m just glad that he outed himself,” Tarrant said. “This gentleman doesn’t have a community presence and his behavior is bizarre; people are afraid of him in Annapolis.” The two-term delegate said during Continued on A3
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Study: Provisional Ballots Can Hurt More than Help By Zenitha Prince Senior AFRO Correspondent Provisional ballots are being misused, including as a potential tool to suppress the votes of African Americans and other minorities, concludes a report released by the Center for American Progress (CAP) Oct. 29. After the dismal 2000 presidential elections in which millions of votes went uncounted, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, which established the provisional voting process in addition to other reforms. “It was meant to be used as a fail-safe,” said Michele Jawando, CAP’s vice president for legal progress. “[But] what the report found is that instead of being used
for their original purpose, provisional ballots are being used in place of effective election administration.” Provisional ballots are usually issued when a voter encounters a problem at the polling place. Voter error accounts for about 3 percent of the cases when provisional ballots are used in place of regular ballots, according to an analysis conducted by the public policy organization Demos after the 2004 election. More frequently, however, the issuance of provisional ballots stems from problems with elections law and administration, the report asserts, including, cumbersome voter registration procedures, restrictive voting laws, lack of voter education,
Comptroller
Register of Wills Ramona Moore-Baker
Attorney General
Sheriff John Anderson
Peter Franchot Brian Frosh
Baltimore City
State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby
Maryland Senate 43rd District Joan Carter Conway 44th District Shirley Nathan-Pulliam 45th District Nathaniel McFadden Maryland House of Delegates
By Zenitha Prince AFRO Senior Correspondent
poorly maintained voter registration lists, and lack of training and mismanagement by election officials. Some poll workers, for example, will let a voter cast a provisional ballot in the wrong precinct even though that state rejects all ballots cast outside a voter’s designated precinct. Or, if the polling place runs out of regular ballots, they would direct voters to cast provisional ballots. More troubling, the report found signs that the use of provisional ballots could be systemic, that is, deliberately used with a racially discriminatory purpose. “We realized this could be another way of disenfranchising communities of color,” Jawando said. “The Continued on A4
44B District Charles E. Sydnor III Pat Young
Democrat Governor Anthony Brown
Write-in Candidate Tarrant Gains Support of Sitting Delegates
44A District, Baltimore City Keith Haynes
45th District, Baltimore City Talmadge Branch Cheryl Glenn Cory McCray
MARYLAND STATEWIDE
Special Homecoming Section • B1
43rd District, Baltimore City Curt Anderson Maggie McIntosh Mary Washington
40th District Antonio Hayes Barbara A. Robinson Shawn Tarrant (write-in) 41st District, Baltimore City Jill P. Carter Nathaniel T. Oaks Samuel I. “Sandy” Rosenberg
Baltimore City Sitting Judges Melissa K. Copeland Jeffrey M. Geller Phillip S. Jackson Alfred Nance Christopher L. Panos Melissa M. Phinn Julie R. Rubin Baltimore County Maryland Senate 10th District Delores G. Kelley Maryland House of Delegates 10th District, Benjamin Brooks Jay Jalisa Adrienne A. Jones 11th District Shelly Hettleman Dan Morhaim Dana Stein County Executive Kevin Kamenetz
Cherry Hill Activists Honor the Past to Inspire the Future Lisa Snowden-McCray Special to the AFRO Five men with roots in Baltimore’s Cherry Hill community will be honored, Nov. 1, at Morgan State University at the second annual Legends of Cherry Hill Hall of Fame Banquet. Singer Jimmy Briscoe, basketball player Leroy Loggins, former Baltimore City police chief Leonard Hamm, Bishop Walter Scott Thomas Sr. and attorney William “Billy” Murphy will be inducted into the hall of fame for the success they’ve had and the way they have served as examples for Cherry Hill children. “The reason I established this is that I grew up in Cherry Hill and when I grew up there was no evidence and examples of positive success stories,” said event organizer Tauheed Burke. Burke, who now lives in Washington D.C., says a lot of the friends he grew up with in Cherry Hill are dead. He says
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that maybe, if they had seen examples of the ways life could be better, they might not have met such tragic fates. “There was no hope, there was no expectation.”
“It has a lot to do with the systems we had in place 25 years ago. There was a sense of togetherness. There were activities, there were sports, there was family.” – Tauheed Burke Burke’s plan is to build a physical space where kids can see paintings of all the Hall of Famers and be inspired. Right now, that doesn’t exist, but Burke says he hopes to begin with a wing at a recreation Continued on A4