The Black Informant

Slot machine gambling is on its way to Broward County thanks to overwhelming support in Tuesday’s election from senior condo leaders, predominantly black neighborhoods and the communities with the most at stake in helping the pari-mutuel industry.

Campaign strategists for the gambling industry heavily concentrated on those areas and held onto them despite a last-minute onslaught by Gov. Jeb Bush and local opponents. That anti-gambling coalition, though, succeeded in turning Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Republican-leaning areas against slots, according to a South Florida Sun-Sentinel analysis of voting data from the county’s Supervisor of Elections office.

…Slot supporters credited a focused get-out-the-vote effort with pulling off Tuesday’s 57 percent victory. Gulfstream Park, Dania Jai-Alai, Hollywood Greyhound Track and Pompano Park Harness Track can add slot machines after state legislators draw up regulations this spring and decide how to direct taxes to help public education as promised.

The pro-slots campaign pushed hard for supporters to vote early by absentee ballot or at early voting sites, and flooded key neighborhoods with mailers and phone calls. Almost 42,000 of the 188,000 people who voted on the referendum in Broward cast ballots before on election day, and two-thirds of them favored slots.

…”For the minority community, it was an economic development issue,” said Hallandale Beach City Commissioner Joe Gibbons, who worked hard to secure the black vote in his area. (more…)

The article speaks VOLUMES to those during the presidential election that suggested that blacks would be too confused in trying to interpret the ballot sheet. I could go on with this, but I think you get the idea.

Releated link: The game that should be called “Pover-opoly”