When it comes to get-out-the-vote efforts this or any campaign season, there are likely few that will be more forceful with a message than what Faya Rouse Toure is spreading: Vote, or Die.

"It sounds dramatic and it is dramatic," said Toure, a civil rights activist from Selma, whose has a goal of increasing voter participation during Alabama's Senate election on Dec. 12 by "20 to 30 percent."

Toure, Alabama's first black female judge, is heading up the "Vote or Die" efforts. She and a group of supporters have handed out bumper stickers, yard signs and T-shirts at football games and rallies. This weekend, they will continue their push by putting on a skit during the Alabama New South Coalition's gathering in Montgomery.

Toure's supporters are not publicly endorsing anyone in next month's Senate general election. But the allegiances are undeniable. In Alabama, where the dominate voting base for Democrats are black voters, Vote or Die's aim is to encourage more participation especially in Birmingham, Mobile, Montgomery and the 18 or so counties that make up the state's "Black Belt" region.

Overall turnout on Dec. 12 is expected to be around 25 percent, according to Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill. The turnout, he said, will exceed the Aug. 15 primaries and Sept. 26 GOP runoff, which generated 14 and 18 percent respectively.

Merrill said somewhere between 950,000 to 1 million voters will show up to the polls next month. But predictions stop short on estimating turnout among demographics.

Political observers believe that black voter turnout in deep red Alabama is crucial to Democrat Doug Jones' chances of defeating Republican Roy Moore in the general election. Moore is leading almost all polls in recent weeks, with an advantage ranging anywhere from 6 to 8 percent, and even higher.

"The black voting is indeed crucial for Jones to make things interesting on Dec. 12," said William Stewart, professor emeritus of political sciences at the University of Alabama.

Said Jess Brown, a retired political science professor at Athens State University: "If we had a regular November election for governor, you'd have 20 percent or a fourth of the votes cast from African American voters. He needs at least that threshold. But if the minority vote is not there, the level of support he needs for Caucasians just is not there."

'Best effort'

Indeed, the basic demographics of Alabama hasn't changed much for decades: Whites have long made up about 70 percent of eligible voters, while blacks are at 25 or 26 percent.

The number of Republican voters who showed up during the Aug. 22 primary compared to Democrats illustrated the stark difference: Republicans had approximately 418,000 votes cast during the GOP primary, with Moore as the top vote-getter at 162,570. The entire Democratic field generated only 154,581 votes.

"That is a strong base message," said Terry Lathan, chairwoman of the Alabama GOP.

Bolstering black voter turnout also comes at a time when turnout has slumped. The past two mayoral races in Birmingham have produced low turnouts. Only 29.5 percent of voters participated in the Oct. 3 runoff election which saw challenger Randall Woodfin defeat incumbent Mayor William Bell. Prior to that, during the Aug. 22 municipal election, 27 percent of voters showed up to cast ballots.

In 2013, Bell defeated four other challengers during a primary in which turnout was 21 percent.

Prior to that, Birmingham municipal elections had much stronger turnout. In 2007, for example, 45 percent of city voters participated in a mayoral election which Larry Langford won. Turnout in the 2009 special mayoral runoff, which Bell won after Langford was removed from office, was 49 percent.

"The place I'm not pleased with is Birmingham. We have to do more in Birmingham," said Toure. "Twenty-five percent of the black voters are there."

In Mobile - where 50.6 percent of the overall population is black, 45 percent is white - turnout was down about 10 percent overall during the Aug. 22 municipal elections that saw incumbent Mayor Sandy Stimpson defeat challenger and former Mayor Sam Jones.

Turnout was especially down in the mostly black precincts that were once avid Sam Jones supporters in years past. Jones was the first black mayor of Mobile.

Nationally, the black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election. It fell to 59.6 percent in last November after reaching a record-high of 66.6 percent in 2012 when President Barack Obama was up for re-election. The 7-percentage-point decline from the previous presidential election is the largest on record for blacks.

"Historically, African American turnout is lower than white turnout in presidential and midterm elections and we might infer that is true in other races as well," said Michael McDonald, associate professor of political sciences at the University of Florida and an expert on voting. "It was true that in 2008 and 2012, the African-American turnout exceeded white turnout. In 2016, we see that African American turnout revert to more normal levels,"

Echoed Richard Fording, a political science professor at the University of Alabama: "Black turnout surged in 2008 and 2012 because Barack Obama was on the ticket. I (saw) 2016 as more of a return to normal due to Obama's absence from the ticket."

But there were some positive signs in Alabama. According to an analysis by the Brookings Institute, utilizing Census Bureau data, black turnout was 61 percent last November, down just two-percentage points from the 2012 and 2008 elections.

White voter turnout in Alabama dropped more between 2012 and 2016. According to the Brookings analysis, 57 percent of college educated and non-college educated white voters in the state participated last November, down from 62 percent in 2012.

Alabama's overwhelming white voter base - there were nearly 2.3 million active white voters in 2016, compared to 846,651 active black voters, according to Secretary of State records -- coalesced around President Donald Trump, enabling him to trounce Democrat Hillary Clinton in the general election.

For the Doug Jones campaign, the Aug. 15 primaries showed that two of the top three counties for turnout occurred in counties that almost always vote Democratic: Sumter and Greene.

In Sumter County, 26.5 percent of voters showed up during the primary. Eddie Hardaway Jr., chairman of the county's Democratic Party, said a similar turnout during the general election would show "that we clearly were not doing our best effort."

"You have to give your best effort to make sure there is no apathy in the African American community and among poor people and anyone else who is supporting the Democratic Party and to make sure we get people out," Hardaway said. "If you lose at that point, we at least made our best effort."

'Take risks'

The Doug Jones campaign, in Greene County this past week, believes their best turnout strategy is to remind voters about Moore's stance on issues, such as the former judge's recent non-committal of the reauthorization of funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

The Moore campaign has said there is no evidence that Moore is refusing to support the program.

"When you have a candidate like Roy Moore who is an existential threat to progress in Alabama and to the health and well-being of voters in the Black Belt and to folks in Decatur (and elsewhere), we believe voters will exercise their self-preservation instincts," said Jones' campaign manager Wade Perry. "He's bad for Alabama."

Perry said he was familiar with Toure's "Vote or Die" campaign, though he confirmed it's unaffiliated with the Doug Jones campaign. "The message is a bit direct, but not unfair," he said.

"If the children's health care and Medicare and Medicaid all goes away ... people will suffer, and some people will die," said Perry.

But Republicans and Moore's campaign aren't giving up on the black vote, even as Jones highlights in campaign ads his compelling background as a former U.S. attorney who prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan members responsible for the Sixteenth Street Church bombing in 1963.

Lathan said that it is Republicans and not Democrats, who align more closely with black voter sentiments on issues such as school choice.

"The last few marches in Montgomery on school choice have (included) thousands of black families and students," said Lathan. "Democrats fight this choice every time. The Republicans implemented it in Alabama."

Maurice McCaney, a black attorney based in Florence, is a Moore supporter who understands that a majority of Alabama black voters tend to support Democrats. But he said Moore's "principled stances" in support of Christianity, traditional marriage and opposition of abortion resonate with black voters in conservative Alabama.

Moore's name recognition is rooted in his conservative social crusades which led to his twice removal as a state judge: Opposition to same-sex marriage and displaying a monument of the Ten Commandments inside the state Supreme Court building.

"As a Christian, we say we ought to put into practice the things we believe," said McCaney. "Here was a judge who was literally doing exactly that with no regard to the repercussions it might have and believing in his Christian principles and that it meant more to him than what the public opinion might've been ... you don't see that nowadays."

Brown, the retired professor at Athens State University, said Moore's controversial public persona is more related to his viewpoints toward same-sex marriage and among Muslims. He said it has little to do "with the typical racial divide in Alabama."

"If you had another Republican on the ballot, the African American voter will vote for the Democrat," Brown said.

Perry, with the Jones campaign, has signaled that that they might "end up reminding people" about Moore's opposition in 2004 of an amendment that would have removed segregationist language in the state constitution. Moore believed, at the time, that removing the language would lead to large tax increases.

The Jones campaign has mostly avoided attacks on hot button social issues during the campaign, such as NFL football players protests during the national anthem or the fate of Confederate monuments.

Jones' pro-choice stance on abortion, according to some political observers, left his campaign damaged. Jones clarified that stance last week, saying he supports the way Alabama's abortion laws are currently structured.

Brown and other political observers said that Jones needs a good deal of white support to win. In Alabama, that means a large amount of crossover votes from Republicans.

"He must take some risks and rattle the cages and he has to come out with issue positions that get him Caucasian votes," said Brown, adding that he believes Jones needs to find a "creative economic message" that resonates with "working class" and "middle class white voters."

Perry said the likely issue could be health care. "You will see a focus on both access and affordability to health care. The campaigns are fluid things and sometimes your best laid plans a month out (from the election) can change based on circumstances. But you will see us continue to focus on health care. Folks across Alabama seem to be concerned about it."

'Every vote counts'

Another voter turnout concern, among Democrats in Alabama, is with Millennial apathy.

The age group - born in the 1980s to the early 2000s - have turned out less during presidential contests than older demographics. Millennials tend to sway heavily Democratic - as of last November, 55 percent of Millennials identified as either Democrats or as Independents who lean Democratic.

"They generally don't turn out for midterm or down ballot elections," said Derryn Moten, chairman of the Department of History and Political Science at Alabama State University. "Older African Americans, like myself, will vote. But I don't know that our demographic will be large enough to swing the race, particularly when every vote counts."

The concern is trickling down to the county level, where groups like the Greene County Democrats are looking at mobilizing on social media for the first time.

"The Millennials are discouraged and we have to do something to reach them on social media," said Lorenzo French, chairman of the Greene County Democrats. "They believe that politicians do nothing, and aren't doing anything to help them."

Meanwhile, local Democratic organizations and the NAACP are planning for active weeks ahead of the election.

Benard Simelton, president of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, said his organization is focusing on phone banking within its 37 branches throughout Alabama.

"We think it's going to be a low turnout ... and it will be a low turnout on all sides," said Simelton. "We can spend our time better doing phone banking and talking directly with people. It seems to help more in getting a larger turnout."