Black turnout in Georgia (United States this time, not the Caucasus) and Obama's reaching out to the deaf community

Two stories from today that have mostly gone unnoticed with all the attention on the VP debates:

Black turnout in Georgia is extremely high in early voting:

A disproportionate number of Georgia’s 194,138 early voters are African-American, in what could be an encouraging sign for Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

As of Wednesday, about 39 percent of those voters — 74,961 — are African-Americans, Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel’s office said.

African-Americans make up 29 percent of registered voters in the state, according to Oct.1 figures. They cast 25 percent of the total votes cast in the presidential election four years ago.

...

About 20,000 Georgians people per day voted by mail or in person last week, Handel spokesman Matt Carrothers said.

This week, its close to 30,000 per day, he said.

And also a story on how the Obama campaign is leaving no stone unturned in contacting potential voters, being sure to contact the deaf community as well:

Obama campaign regional press secretary Melissa Nitti thinks this is the reflection of the type of campaign they are running and how that's different than the McCain campaign.

“It's a bottom-up approach that starts at the grassroots,” Nitti said. “That's why we listen to our volunteers who - in this case - came up with the idea to bring the TTY machine in and reaching out to this group of people.

“This is a reflection of how hard we work to listen to community members, to get their opinions and their ideas about who we need to be reaching and how to reach them.”

Nitti also said Callaway County seems to be unique in starting this and she doesn't know of any other of the campaign's headquarters that have reached out to the deaf community in this sort of way.