Registrations increase 70% in Guilford
10-5-04
By Matt Williams, Staff Writer
News & Record
Thousands of new voters have joined election rolls for November's presidential election, forcing workers in to overtime to process registrations.
In Guilford County, Elections Director George Gilbert said new registrations this summer are up 70 percent over the same period in 2000, when Al Gore and George Bush battled for the presidency.
From July 1 to Sept. 30 of this year, 14,000 voters joined the rolls for the first time in the county. In 2000, that number was closer to 8,000.
In addition, 18,000 voters filed a change of information such as a new address or party affiliation. Gilbert said the number of changes indicates people are going back to fix registrations that may have been completed years ago and never used. As of Oct. 1, there were 291,339 registered voters in the county.
The statewide deadline for new registrations and address changes is Friday. Applications received or postmarked by that date will be processed in time for the Nov. 2 general election.
Election workers should be able to handle the increase in time for the November vote, Gilbert said. However, residents who file their registrations just before the deadline might not be processed in time for the first week of early voting, which begins Oct. 15. The department hopes to have all registrations processed by Oct. 20.
"We'll just have to do some overtime and get it done," Gilbert said.
The federal Motor Voter Act has helped spread registrations throughout the year. Counties get continuous updates from the Department of Motor Vehicles as people get driver's licenses, so fewer people wait until the last minute to get in the system. Gilbert said during the 1988 presidential election, his office processed 40,000 to 50,000 registrations in the closing month.
"It used to be much worse," Gilbert said.
Janet Odell, elections director in Rockingham County, said registrations are up 2,621 over 2000. The total stood at 53,891 Monday. "We probably got in 200 today," she said Monday.
People registering are a mix of young and old.
"We've had lot of people in their 60s who have never registered to vote or haven't voted since Eisenhower," she said.
Odell will have people working this weekend and doing overtime to get the registrations done before one-stop voting begins Oct. 14.
Smaller increases have been seen in other Piedmont Triad counties. In Davidson County, Elections Director Ruth Huneycutt said the number of new registrations in the past month, 914, is a little higher than a typical election year but not too many for the staff to handle.
In Randolph County, the voter rolls grew by 1,536, though Director Patsy Foscue says the slew of applications made it feel like 15,000.
"We'll be working long hours," Foscue said.
While the jump in registrations are only a minor task for local elections offices to overcome, agencies in key battleground states face a mountain of applications to process in time. The spike in voter registration has caught many county election offices off guard, forcing them to hire extra workers to process the overflow of applications.
In Minnesota, the number of registered voters jumped by 56,691 since the June 18 primary. In Ohio, 116,000 voters were added to the rolls between Aug. 18 and Sept. 15. Still, many states won't know the extent of the trend until all counties report their data after this week.
"We've had to bring in more people to handle the flow of registration," said John Williams, director of the elections office for Hamilton County in central Ohio. "There will certainly be more people showing up at the polls."
Williams reported that 62,272 new voters had registered since Jan. 1 in his county alone. Still, some experts are uncertain whether the higher registration will translate into greater turnout.
"Voting is a learned behavior," said Doug Lewis, head of The Election Center, a nonprofit that works with election officials. "After you've voted three times, you're far more likely to continue voting."
Thousands of grass-roots organizations plan to make sure new voters head into the voting booth. Many will offer transportation and child-care services to make voting more convenient.
Vote, Run, Lead, a New York-based group reaching out to women ages 18 to 35, plans to provide limousines on college campuses to drive students to the polls.
"Some states show high turnout for women in general, but extremely low turnout for young women," said Erin Vilardi from Vote, Run, Lead. "We're trying to get older and younger women to work together to get more involved."
National Voice, a organization that helps community groups promote voting, will be mobilizing thousands of volunteers in key swing-states to go door-to-door, make calls and send literature to remind people about Election Day and their voting rights.
Staff writers Bob Burchette and Carla Bagley and Knight Ridder News /Service contributed to this report.
( http://www.news-record.com/election/election2004/registration100504.htm )
---------------------
when i 1st heard about this yesterday, i was like
that's off tha CHAIN!! aware of the voter registration statistics of the county u're registered in???
-does a dance-
