Report finds that its a fact, Blacks wait longer to vote

Black voters wait longer to cast ballots, discouraging them from voting, according to a study released by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C.

The report, titled “Reducing Long Lines to Vote,” reported African Americans waited an average of 23 minutes to vote compared with 19 minutes for Hispanics, 15 minutes for Asians, 13 minutes for Native Americans and 12 minutes for whites.

The Joint Center released its report just prior to the 2016 presidential election and President Barack Obama encouraging African Americans to vote for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s nominee for president.

During the Congressional Black Caucus Dinner Saturday night in Washington, D.C., President Obama told the black-tie audience that it would be a personal insult to his legacy if the Black community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in the election.

There is a push to get a strong Black-voter turnout for Clinton. The New York Post released a poll on Sunday showing that a growing number of African Americans prefer Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, to Clinton, but that may change.

Clinton has called Black teens super predators. President Bill Clinton pushed through the North American Free Trade Agreement that has cost Black workers thousands of good-paying jobs. He also successfully pushed for tough-on-crime legislation that sent a lot of Black men to prison.

Until recently, Trump said President Obama was not born in the United States to delegitimize Obama’s presidency.

The Joint Center said one study estimated that long lines deterred at least 730,000 from voting in the 2012 presidential election.

In Florida, a key state in the presidential election, wait times averaged 42 minutes compared with wait times of six minutes in New Jersey.

Florida’s Miami-Dade County had the highest percentage of people of color. In Miami-Dade, 85 percent of voters had voting wait times that averaged 73 minutes after the polls closed.

Citrus, the Florida county with the lowest percentage of people of color, had no lines when the polls closed, the Joint Center reported.

This article originally published in the October 3, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.