Voter advocacy group Black Futures Lab recently announced that they’re working on creating “the largest survey of Black Americans” for the upcoming midterm elections.
Known as the “Black Census Project,” the political study aims to involve over 200,000 people nationwide, representing different groups in the community such as gender and location.
With the help of 50 other Black-led organizations and news outlet BET’s midterm election campaign, #ReclaimYourVote22, Black Futures Lab will work on gathering the opinions of the participants on political topics such as the people voted in charge, the problems in the community and how to increase voting rates amongst Black American adults.
Through the survey, the advocacy nonprofit aims to give as many Black Americans the chance to be heard to create a comprehensive list of issues in the community that need to be fixed and addressed during the midterm elections.
The Black Census Project was previously held in 2018 for the first time. Founded by activist and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, Alicia Garza, the survey included over 30,000 participants from all over the U.S., officially making the survey the largest one amongst the Black American population since the Reconstruction Era. In their findings, Black Futures Lab found that economic insecurity and violence against trans women were part of the key issues identified.
“The problems facing Black communities are complex. The solutions to these problems will come from our imagination, our innovation, and experimentation,” read an official statement on the group’s official website. “To get there, we work to understand the dynamics impacting our communities; we build the capacity of our communities to govern; and we engage and include Black people in the decisions that impact our lives.”
The return of the census project comes two years after the 2020 Presidential elections set a new voting record. Almost 160 million Americans placed a ballot, making the historic voter turnout one of the largest turnouts in more than 100 years. According to information source United States Elections Projects, 66.7% of eligible voters took part in the election.
A record 30 million Black Americans were part of these eligible voters, according to the Pew Research Center. Over a third of these voters lived in battleground states and played a crucial role in securing wins for President Biden.
“What is really going to change the way that people think about the power of their vote is the decisions that get made as a result of it,” said Garza in conversation with BET, “so that’s really what we’re focused on.”
