[Mb-civic] As Deadlines Hit, Rolls of Voters Show Big Surge

[Michael Butler]

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  As Deadlines Hit, Rolls of Voters Show Big Surge
  By Kate Zernike and Ford Fessenden
  The New York Times

  Monday 04 October 2004

  A record surge of potential new voters has swamped boards of election from
Pennsylvania to Oregon, as the biggest of the crucial swing states reach
registration deadlines today. Elections officials have had to add staff and
equipment, push well beyond budgets and work around the clock to process the
registrations.

  In Montgomery County, Pa., the elections staff has been working nights and
weekends since the week before Labor Day to process the crush of
registrations - some 32,000 since May and counting. Today is the deadline
for registering new voters in Pennsylvania, as well as Ohio, Michigan,
Florida and 12 other states, and election workers will go on mandatory
overtime to chip away at the thousands of forms that have been arriving
daily.

   To help in the effort, the Montgomery office has also added 12 computers,
15 phone lines and 12 workers from other departments - as well as one of the
technicians whose usual job is fixing voting machines at the warehouse.

   Across the county line in Philadelphia, overtime and weekend duty began
in July to deal with what is now the highest number of new voter
registrations in 21 years. The office says it is still six days behind the
flow, and the last two days have brought about 10,500 new registration
forms. At 204,000, the number of new registrations has already surpassed
that of the last big year, 1992, which had 193,000.

   "The vote was so close four years ago, people are now thinking, hey,
maybe my vote does count," said Joseph R. Passarella, the director of voter
services in Montgomery County. Al Gore won in Pennsylvania in 2000 by
204,840 votes.

  Officials across the country report similar patterns.

  "Everything we're seeing is that there has been a tremendous increase in
voter registration," said Kay Maxwell, president of the League of Women
Voters. "In the past, we've been enthused about what appeared to be a large
number of new voters, but this does seem to be at an entirely different
level."

  Registration numbers are impossible to tally nationwide, and how many of
the newly registered will vote is a matter of some debate. But it is clear
the pace is particularly high in urban areas of swing states, where
independent Democratic groups and community organizations have been running
a huge voter registration campaign for just over a year.

  The parties have been registering voters as well, with Republicans
especially active in critical states in an effort to counter the independent
groups.

   In Cleveland, the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has spent $200,000
on temporary workers this year to deal with a wave of 230,000 new
registrations, more than double the number in 2000. The number of
registrations in Tallahassee, Fla., is up 20 percent since the presidential
primary in March. And St. Louis is reporting the largest growth ever in
potential new voters.

   "We are moving toward having the largest number of registered voters in
the history of St. Louis County," said David Welch, one of the directors of
elections.

  Las Vegas added 3,000 to 4,000 voters a week in 2000 but is doing triple
that this year, forcing the office to hire 30 additional workers. The
elections director said he was getting 3,000 new cards a day last week.

  Eight states reached registration deadlines over the weekend, and
registration will end in 31 states by the end of the week. New Jersey's
deadline is today, New York's Friday. The registration deadline in
Connecticut is Oct. 19. Six states allow registration on Election Day.

  A coalition of nonpartisan groups called National Voice announced last
week a push for an additional 200,000 registrations in the last days.
Project Vote, the nonpartisan arm of the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now, which claims more than a million registrations
in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington and other states, planned to have its
largest force of paid workers on the streets over the weekend registering
people to vote.

  These nonpartisan community groups, as well as Democratic organizations
like America Coming Together, have driven most of the increase, registration
officials say. In Florida and Ohio, Republicans have mounted moderately
successful campaigns that have increased registration in suburban
communities.

   But the huge gains have come in areas with minority and low-income
populations. In some of those areas in Ohio, new registrations have
quadrupled from 2000. President Bush won in Ohio in 2000 by 165,019 votes.

  It is harder to say what is driving the registration increase in
Montgomery County, which is still considered "a Republican town" even though
it went for Mr. Gore in 2000 and Bill Clinton before that. One of the
wealthiest counties in Pennsylvania, it has had a lot of new building in
recent years. But it also has working-class communities and is about 10
percent minority, and the community organizations say they have worked hard
to register people here.

  Some people registering have lived here for years but have not voted.

  "I've been too lazy," said Kurt Saukaitis, 43, who was registering at the
county office. He and his new wife, Candy, both have 16-year-old sons. "The
thought of a draft is scary," Mr. Saukaitis said.

  He works at an aerospace factory that was bought recently by a company on
the West Coast, creating economic anxiety among its workers. "All that money
spent on Iraq, then old people can't buy medicine," he said. "Figure that
out."

  Bob Lee, the administrator for voter registrations in Philadelphia, said:
"I think voter registration would be high even if this weren't a
battleground state. Just because people have a very high interest in this
election."

   The big unknown is whether the new registrations will result in higher
turnout. Election officials say some of the big groups seem to be signing up
anyone on the streets to reach quotas, with half-filled-out forms suggesting
something less than true enthusiasm.

   Nevertheless, registration officials are expecting frantic deadline days;
offices in Philadelphia and Miami-Dade County, Fla., will stay open until
midnight. Matt Damschroder, the elections director in Columbus, Ohio, will
post workers on the street outside the building to take registrations.

  "Almost to an April 15, I.R.S. post office type of operation," Mr.
Damschroder said. "We're expecting that it's going to be folks coming in by
the truckload." He has had 12 people working around the clock in 12-hour
shifts, six days a week, to keep up with the flow, but he is still two days
behind.

   Jacksonville, Fla., has hired 14 people since August, putting everyone on
seven-day workweeks, 12 hours a day. Oregon's deadline is not until Oct. 12,
but the state elections division has started sending registration cards to
the counties daily instead of weekly to keep up with the pace of applicants.
Marion County, which includes Salem, has tripled its staff, from 4 to 12.

   In rural areas and in nonswing states, the picture is less extreme. The
three employees in the elections office in Putnam County, Ohio, said they
were handling new registrations with no problem. In largely uncontested
South Carolina, Greenville County officials said the pace was about what it
was in 2000, and in California, which has traditionally backed the
Democratic candidate in presidential races, registrations in Los Angeles
County were actually running below the level of four years ago. Yet in
suburban Cook County, Illinois, outside Chicago, workers processed 46,000
registrations in September, the biggest monthly total since 1992.

   Many elections offices said they had increased their overtime budgets in
anticipation of a healthy increase in registration this year. But, as
Michael Vu, the director in Cuyahoga County, said, "I don't think 100,000
extra voters was in anyone's plan."

  Registration campaigns are usually reserved for August and September of
election years. This round, the wave started early, with independent groups
organizing in crucial states like Ohio last year. During the spring and
summer, partisan and nonpartisan groups sent out hundreds of paid workers,
and many swing states showed unusually early swells in registration in
March, April and May.

  There was some question whether the August and September peaks would be
lower as a result, but elections officials in many places reported that
their September numbers were higher than normal.

  Ms. Maxwell, of the League of Women Voters, noted that surges in
registration have sometimes dissolved in disappointing turnout. But last
year in the Philadelphia mayor's race, independent groups that registered
thousands of new voters claimed their turnout was nearly as high as that in
the rest of the electorate. Steve Rosenthal, the Democratic chief executive
of America Coming Together, said 44 percent of the 85,000 voters his
organization registered last year turned out, compared with 49 percent over
all.

   Republicans, who have also shown huge success with face-to-face turnout
campaigns in recent elections, say their voters are more committed and will
be easier to get to the polls than Democrats.

  Although many election officials reported backlogs, none said they would
fail to get all the new voters on the rolls in time to vote on Nov. 2. But
with so many new voters on the rolls, the election officials are starting to
worry about what happens at the polls. Unfamiliarity with voting procedures,
confusing ballots and faulty technology were largely to blame for Florida's
election fiasco in 2000.

   "It's going to be insane," said Tim Dowling, who was opening registration
forms in Philadelphia. He corrected himself: "It's already insane. It's been
nuts since June."

  

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