There is power in just one vote.

Pittsburgh Urban League President Esther Bush told the 360 people who attended the group's annual meeting and conference yesterday that now more than ever citizens must recognize their importance in the democratic process and the difference one vote can make come Nov. 2.

	Online Graphic: Black Pittsburgh at a glance See demographic information comparing blacks and whites in Pittsburgh.

"Your vote is powerful and you hold leadership -- on all levels of government -- accountable for their actions depending on how you choose to cast it," she told the audience gathered at Carnegie Mellon University in Oakland.

Bush noted that in Tennessee, the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote was ratified by a one-vote margin, making the amendment part of the Constitution. In 1960, John Kennedy won the presidency because of one vote per precinct in Illinois, giving him enough electoral clout to claim victory.

She said too much is at stake -- the Iraqi war, criminal justice issues, health care and potential nominees to the Supreme Court -- for people not to exercise their power. She also said issues such as education and income gaps between blacks and whites in Pittsburgh show there's a critical need to vote.

African-American children, working-age adults and the elderly are among the most disadvantaged in the nation, according to reports from the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Social and Urban Research. In this region, about half of black men older than 18 are unemployed, and more than one-third of black children live in poverty and more than 70 percent of them live with their single mothers.

"Politics controls everything around us, from our school boards to which streets are paved to where stop signs and traffic signals are placed," Bush said.

For matters to improve in Allegheny County, the 106,000 eligible black voters that the 2000 U.S. Census counted must go to the polls in four weeks, she said.

The issue is serious enough that Bush has advocated schools playing a larger role in cultivating the process by making teens as excited about voting as they are about receiving their driver's licenses.

She said: "If each and every one of us cast our votes, our individual power will be strengthened by a collective influence that will lead to a tide of change."