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If you are a Democrat, and you get less than 90% of the black vote, you are going to likely lose your election.

In the past the great majority of minority voters, in Ohio and other places that means African American voters, cast a large percentage of their votes during the early voting process.

I won the youth vote in Massachusetts and in California. I did very well with it in Ohio.

I grew up in Illinois.

But I know that the vote of 9 out of 10 black Americans for the Democratic Party or for leftist kinds of policies just is not reflective of their opinions.

The biggest challenge I have with Washingtonians is they think Illinois is exclusively a Democratic state.

I still think of myself as from Illinois.

Many have fought for and even lost their lives to end segregation, to win the right to vote. It disappoints me to now have to cajole people to register and to vote.

Black Fergusonians have shown that they will vote when they have something to vote for and know that their vote will count. Seventy-six percent of them turned out in November 2012, when Missouri was a key swing state for Barack Obama's reelection.