belgareth
09-28-2004, 02:34 PM
New Voters Flooding Election Offices
By ROBERT TANNER, AP National Writer
New voters are flooding local election offices
with paperwork, registering in significantly higher numbers than four years ago as attention to the presidential
election runs high and an array of activist groups recruit would-be voters who could prove critical come Nov. 2.
Cleveland has seen nearly twice as many new voters register so far
as compared with 2000; Philadelphia is having its biggest boom in new voters in 20 years; and counties are bringing
in temporary workers and employees from other agencies to help process all the new registration forms.
Nationwide figures aren't yet available, but anecdotal evidence
shows an upswing in many places, often urban but some rural. Some wonder whether the new voters — some of whom sign
up at the insistence of workers paid by get-out-the-vote organizations — will actually make it to the polls on
Election Day, but few dispute the registration boom.
"We're
swamped," said Bob Lee, who oversees voter registration in Philadelphia. "It seems like everybody and their little
group is out there trying to register people."
Some examples, from
interviews with state and county officials across the country:
_ New
registered voters in Miami-Dade County, a crucial Florida county in 2000, grew by 65 percent through mid-September,
compared with 2000.
_ New registered voters jumped nearly 150
percent in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) in Ohio, one of the most hard-fought states this year.
And that's with weeks left until registration deadlines fall,
beginning in October.
Curtis Gans at the Committee for the Study of
the American Electorate said a clear national picture won't emerge until more applications are processed next
month. And Kay Maxwell of the League of Women Voters cautioned that some years that promise a boom in new voters
turn out to be duds on Election Day. The danger is that new voters may not be as committed to showing up at the
polls as longtime voters.
"Turning people out to vote is tougher
than getting them to register," said Doug Lewis, who works with local election officials as head of The Election
Center, a nonprofit group.
Rural areas, which trend conservative and
Republican, aren't necessarily reporting the same growth as urban, more liberal and Democratic strongholds: Brazos
County, Texas, hasn't beaten its 2000 numbers so far, though officials said applications are now rolling in. The
state of Oklahoma, however, saw new registrations in July and August increase by 60 percent compared with four years
ago.
Oklahoma officials said they had 16,000 new Republican
registrations, 15,000 new Democrats and 3,500 new independents. In Oregon, where new registrations grew by 4 percent
from January through Sept. 1, Democrats outregistered Republicans two-to-one.
Lewis and others say that no matter what the partisan breakdown, the registration boom is real — driven by
a swarm of organizations such as Smack Down Your Vote (a professional wrestling-connected campaign), Hip-Hop Team
Vote, traditional groups like the League of Women Voters; party-aligned groups such as America Coming Together, made
up of deep-pocketed Democrats; and many, many more.
"There seem to
be hundreds of them," Maxwell said.
The groups' focus is on states
where the vote was close in 2000, but even in several states where the election isn't as competitive, officials say
they are seeing new voters register in higher numbers. Officials in El Paso County, Texas, Maryland's Montgomery
County, a suburb of Washington, D.C., and California's Los Angeles County said registration numbers are on pace to
be higher than 2000.
In many jurisdictions, administrators complain
that the crush of new registrations is overloading staff.
Clerks
have hired extra workers in West Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. Philadelphia borrowed employees from other city
agencies and started working overtime two months earlier than the usual post-Labor Day push.
In Greenbrier County, W.Va., deputy clerk Gail White said she's
never seen so many people register in her 10 years working elections, and despite extra staff she's still behind on
processing new and absentee voters. "I get them all typed up, and the next thing I know, here comes another pile,"
she said.
The reasons seem clear — groups on all sides were
energized by the close election of 2000, which proved to doubters that a handful of votes can swing an election. In
2000, 9 percent of voters, roughly 9.5 million people, said that was their first time casting a ballot, according to
AP exit polls.
"It's the high-growth areas, the suburban and
exurban areas in those battleground states," said Scott Stanzel of the Bush-Cheney campaign. "There are
opportunities there because there are so many new residents to register."
The GOP has launched a volunteer, precinct-by-precinct effort in swing states, with separate help from a
Republican-aligned group, the Progress for America Voter Fund.
Democrats, who've consistently made turnout efforts the foundation of their campaigns, are devoting huge
amounts of resources, too. America Coming Together focuses solely on registering and turning out voters.
The McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law has boosted efforts,
too. It cut off unlimited "soft" money to the parties, diverting some of that cash to community-based groups.
In Missouri, the result is that what used to be a mostly
volunteer-driven voter-registration effort by the Missouri Citizen Education Fund has blossomed into a bigger,
paid-staff operation, said executive director John Hickey. Funds jumped from a few thousand dollars a year to
$250,000.
Focused on poor, black neighborhoods in St. Louis,
mid-Missouri and rural areas, his staff went from registering a few thousand new voters in 2000 to at least 50,000
so far this year, Hickey said. In 2000, George W. Bush won the state by less than 80,000 votes.
By ROBERT TANNER, AP National Writer
New voters are flooding local election offices
with paperwork, registering in significantly higher numbers than four years ago as attention to the presidential
election runs high and an array of activist groups recruit would-be voters who could prove critical come Nov. 2.
Cleveland has seen nearly twice as many new voters register so far
as compared with 2000; Philadelphia is having its biggest boom in new voters in 20 years; and counties are bringing
in temporary workers and employees from other agencies to help process all the new registration forms.
Nationwide figures aren't yet available, but anecdotal evidence
shows an upswing in many places, often urban but some rural. Some wonder whether the new voters — some of whom sign
up at the insistence of workers paid by get-out-the-vote organizations — will actually make it to the polls on
Election Day, but few dispute the registration boom.
"We're
swamped," said Bob Lee, who oversees voter registration in Philadelphia. "It seems like everybody and their little
group is out there trying to register people."
Some examples, from
interviews with state and county officials across the country:
_ New
registered voters in Miami-Dade County, a crucial Florida county in 2000, grew by 65 percent through mid-September,
compared with 2000.
_ New registered voters jumped nearly 150
percent in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) in Ohio, one of the most hard-fought states this year.
And that's with weeks left until registration deadlines fall,
beginning in October.
Curtis Gans at the Committee for the Study of
the American Electorate said a clear national picture won't emerge until more applications are processed next
month. And Kay Maxwell of the League of Women Voters cautioned that some years that promise a boom in new voters
turn out to be duds on Election Day. The danger is that new voters may not be as committed to showing up at the
polls as longtime voters.
"Turning people out to vote is tougher
than getting them to register," said Doug Lewis, who works with local election officials as head of The Election
Center, a nonprofit group.
Rural areas, which trend conservative and
Republican, aren't necessarily reporting the same growth as urban, more liberal and Democratic strongholds: Brazos
County, Texas, hasn't beaten its 2000 numbers so far, though officials said applications are now rolling in. The
state of Oklahoma, however, saw new registrations in July and August increase by 60 percent compared with four years
ago.
Oklahoma officials said they had 16,000 new Republican
registrations, 15,000 new Democrats and 3,500 new independents. In Oregon, where new registrations grew by 4 percent
from January through Sept. 1, Democrats outregistered Republicans two-to-one.
Lewis and others say that no matter what the partisan breakdown, the registration boom is real — driven by
a swarm of organizations such as Smack Down Your Vote (a professional wrestling-connected campaign), Hip-Hop Team
Vote, traditional groups like the League of Women Voters; party-aligned groups such as America Coming Together, made
up of deep-pocketed Democrats; and many, many more.
"There seem to
be hundreds of them," Maxwell said.
The groups' focus is on states
where the vote was close in 2000, but even in several states where the election isn't as competitive, officials say
they are seeing new voters register in higher numbers. Officials in El Paso County, Texas, Maryland's Montgomery
County, a suburb of Washington, D.C., and California's Los Angeles County said registration numbers are on pace to
be higher than 2000.
In many jurisdictions, administrators complain
that the crush of new registrations is overloading staff.
Clerks
have hired extra workers in West Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. Philadelphia borrowed employees from other city
agencies and started working overtime two months earlier than the usual post-Labor Day push.
In Greenbrier County, W.Va., deputy clerk Gail White said she's
never seen so many people register in her 10 years working elections, and despite extra staff she's still behind on
processing new and absentee voters. "I get them all typed up, and the next thing I know, here comes another pile,"
she said.
The reasons seem clear — groups on all sides were
energized by the close election of 2000, which proved to doubters that a handful of votes can swing an election. In
2000, 9 percent of voters, roughly 9.5 million people, said that was their first time casting a ballot, according to
AP exit polls.
"It's the high-growth areas, the suburban and
exurban areas in those battleground states," said Scott Stanzel of the Bush-Cheney campaign. "There are
opportunities there because there are so many new residents to register."
The GOP has launched a volunteer, precinct-by-precinct effort in swing states, with separate help from a
Republican-aligned group, the Progress for America Voter Fund.
Democrats, who've consistently made turnout efforts the foundation of their campaigns, are devoting huge
amounts of resources, too. America Coming Together focuses solely on registering and turning out voters.
The McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law has boosted efforts,
too. It cut off unlimited "soft" money to the parties, diverting some of that cash to community-based groups.
In Missouri, the result is that what used to be a mostly
volunteer-driven voter-registration effort by the Missouri Citizen Education Fund has blossomed into a bigger,
paid-staff operation, said executive director John Hickey. Funds jumped from a few thousand dollars a year to
$250,000.
Focused on poor, black neighborhoods in St. Louis,
mid-Missouri and rural areas, his staff went from registering a few thousand new voters in 2000 to at least 50,000
so far this year, Hickey said. In 2000, George W. Bush won the state by less than 80,000 votes.