Black pastors issue urgent plea to voters at Sunday services

DETROIT (AP) — At Sunday services, in rallies and on social media, black pastors urged congregants to vote, hoping to inspire a late flood of African-American turnout that could help propel Democrat Hillary Clinton to victory in critical swing states on Tuesday.

Along with women and Hispanics, African-Americans are seen as critical to Clinton's chances against Republican Donald Trump, who polls show is not popular among black voters.

[...] early voting data from key states indicate turnout will not be as high this year as it was four years ago, when Barack Obama, the nation's first African-American president, was on the ballot.

"Preachers are trying to strike a moral nerve and somehow penetrate the fog of indifference and try to remind people what's at stake this year," said the Rev. James Forbes, retired senior minister of The Riverside Church, who has been traveling the country to mobilize voters.

In the last presidential election year, blacks for the first time voted at a higher rate, 66.2 percent, than did whites (64.1 percent), or Asian-Americans or Hispanics, with rates of about 48 percent each.

Besides the absence of a black candidate on either major-party ticket, community leaders and others blame the lower turnout so far on voter suppression efforts, such as limits to early voting hours in some communities and challenges by individuals to voter registrations.

In North Carolina, where clergy and others have led marches to early voting sites, preliminary early voting totals showed a drop in percentages for Democratic and black voters compared to 2012, while unaffiliated and Republican vote totals were higher.