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Last-minute registration swamps offices

Thousands rush to sign up to vote on deadline day

By Myung Oak Kim, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published October 7, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Anthony McCune looks over Anne Parent's voter registration form as he helps her register for the first time at the Denver Elections Division office.

Photo by Darin McGregor / The Rocky

Anthony McCune looks over Anne Parent's voter registration form as he helps her register for the first time at the Denver Elections Division office.

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Monday was the busiest day since the 2004 election for many county election offices as thousands of people scrambled to meet the voter registration deadline.

The Denver elections office lobby filled up as soon as the doors opened at 8 a.m. People took numbers and waited to be called to the counter, where eight workers handled more than 100 people an hour for much of the day.

Officials decided just after 4 p.m. to keep the doors open an additional two hours past closing, until 7 p.m., to accommodate the last- minute rush of people wanting to register to vote, sign up for a mail ballot or update their registration.

The Denver Elections office received more than 6,000 registration or mail-ballot applications from voter drives alone on Monday. More than 95,000 forms have been received in Denver since May.

At Arapahoe County elections headquarters in Littleton, 13 employees staffed the phones all day. Clerk and Recorder Nancy Doty said more than 1,000 people called, about 500 people went to the office and 800 people sent in forms by fax.

"It's unbelievable," Doty said. "This is the busiest day since Election Day of '04."

Hundreds of people showed up at the Weld County elections office and even more people called with last-minute questions, said Clerk and Recorder Steve Moreno.

"The phone was ringing off the hook," he said. "It sounds like Las Vegas in here."

The bustle at elections offices was the latest sign of intense interest in the presidential election. Officials in some major Colorado counties are predicting turnout greater than 90 percent.

Mail voting starts this week and Election Day is Nov. 4.

The recent flood of new forms will delay a final count of registered voters in the largest counties for up to two weeks, election officials said. Counties must have their voter list finished before Oct. 20, when early voting begins.

Many of the new voters have been signed up through registration drives. The most active have been those launched by the Barack Obama campaign, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), and others that target minority and young voters.

ACORN, working with a national group called Project Vote, signed up 1.3 million voters in 21 states - more than in any recent election, officials said Monday. That includes about 70,000 Colorado voters.

At 3 p.m., Rachel Chaparro dropped off almost 300 forms at the Denver office. She works for the Latina Initiative, which has been signing up voters. She said her group will deliver or mail 600 to 700 forms in a half-dozen counties. It has signed up 5,500 to 5,700 people in all, she said.

Even though the crowds were large at the Denver Elections office, lines moved quickly.

Many voters said they drove to the office just to make sure their registration information was correct.

Paperwork deluge

New voter registration forms, changes and mail-ballot requests submitted to the Denver Elections Office.

Date.......Registration drives.......Mail, walk-in, other

*Sept........21,205.......20,005

*Oct. 1-4....4,557.......9,276

*Oct. 6.......6,247.......1,522

Comments

  • October 7, 2008

    7:37 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    LingLingfor_prez writes:

    I guess some people didn't know there was a registration deadline. Talk about waiting till the last minute.

  • October 7, 2008

    9:32 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    T1anda writes:

    I see ACORN(Obama's bully association and currently under investigation for voter fraud in 21 other states) registering transients, illegal aliens,ineligable voters of every kind is still on the job for Obama! Disgusting!!!

  • October 7, 2008

    10:26 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    SPL writes:

    Are you saying T1anda that if a voter is ineligible then it won't get spotted by the people who check the details? Paranoid republican are you? :D

    As an immigrant (not a citizen yet) I very much doubt they'd take my application for voting rights and grant them. Quit your whining.

  • October 7, 2008

    10:52 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    T1anda writes:

    SPL Check out ACORN and their shady dealings!! Almost half of these United States DON'T even ask for an ID when registering to vote and that is a FACT!! If you want to vote go to Ohio they and a few other states have same day registration and voting! That fact is an open invitation for voter fraud and ACORN takes advantage of it!!

  • October 7, 2008

    11:27 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    SPL writes:

    Whether a registration is bogus or not, surely it is checked at some point? It can't be that easy to just say "I'm John Smith of Longmont, my vote is for Nader" and have a done-deal? I certainly hope there is rigor in the entry of voters and their eligibility.

  • October 7, 2008

    3:16 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    Mayor_Quimby writes:

    "Whether a registration is bogus or not, surely it is checked at some point? It can't be that easy to just say "I'm John Smith of Longmont, my vote is for Nader" and have a done-deal? I certainly hope there is rigor in the entry of voters and their eligibility."

    Not with the crooks in the democratic party signing up homeless and then driving them to the polls to vote for Obama in return for food and alcohol. Cheating at the polls, its the democratic party's way!

  • October 7, 2008

    3:48 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    T1anda writes:

    Did you look at the title of this page??? If they are "swamped" with voter registration SPL, just think of the chaos on election day! Fraud in elections is not only a possiblility it happens all the time!!! Obama and his ilk are using nasty,some illlegal, underhanded, tactics to register voters!! Don't believe me?? Google ACORN and learn!!!

  • October 8, 2008

    9:08 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Speak writes:

    © 2008 Associated Press Reports

    Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has raised about $3.3 million from contributors who did not list a home state or who designated their state with an abbreviation that did not match one of the 50 states or U.S. territories, according to records provided by the Federal Election Commission. The Obama campaign has begun to request passport numbers from donors to verify their citizenship.

    In Nevada, nearly 1,000 felons were registered illegally in 2004.
    An extraordinary number of newly registered voters, especially those enlisted by organizations such as ACORN with a reputation for bogus registrations. Acorn office raided in voter fraud probe. The raid comes two months after state and federal authorities formed a task force to pursue election-fraud allegations in Nevada

    · In Wisconsin, Milwaukee election officials recently turned in 32 more voter registration workers to the district attorney’s office for possible prosecution, bringing the total cases pending to 39.

    · The Ohio secretary of state is, in effect, disenfranchising voters who relied on printed applications for absentee ballots, claiming they shouldn’t get a ballot because all of the appropriate boxes were not checked.

    · There is a growing shortage of volunteer poll workers as that group ages: In March 2002, an unprecedented number of poll workers didn’t report for work in Los Angeles County. Almost 125 precincts opened late, and one didn’t open at all.

    · Author John Fund also reports on a ticking time bomb: Since 2000, elections offices in upwards of 70 percent to 75 percent of the nation have changed voting equipment. Kim Brace of Election Data Services warns: “Every time you make a change, it has the potential of causing problems.” Inevitably, the biggest problems occur the first time the new equipment is used, she said.