Nbadan
09-28-2004, 12:45 PM
Join the crowd, living or not, register to vote!
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."
SNIP
Yahoo (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040928/ap_on_el_pr/new_voters&cid=694&ncid=716)
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."
SNIP
Yahoo (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040928/ap_on_el_pr/new_voters&cid=694&ncid=716)