Voter rolls get a boost in Durham
Anne Blythe, Staff Writer, Modified: Oct 14, 2006 03:50 AM
DURHAM - Fueled by voter registration drives at Duke University and N.C. Central University, new registrations surged Friday.
Mike Ashe, director of the Durham County Board of Elections, said his office had been inundated on the final day to register for the Nov. 7 election.
"It seems like everybody from the procrastinator party came in," Ashe said. "The last day is always busy. This is the busiest nonpresidential year that I've had."
On Friday, Ashe said, he collected at least 350 new voter registration forms from NCCU students and 350 from Duke students.
Interest in the Duke lacrosse rape case sparked voter registration drives on the college campuses.
Stefanie Sparks, a paralegal with Ekstrand and Ekstrand, a Durham law office representing lacrosse players who were not indicted in the case, helped Duke students with their voter drive.
Sparks said Friday she thought the registration drive had netted more than 1,000 new Duke voters.
Ashe said that by his count -- and he said the official count would go on through the weekend -- the Duke voter drive had brought in nearly 750 new registrations.
Sparks is part of Ethical Durham, a political group endorsing Lewis Cheek, the county commissioner whose name was added to the ballot this summer amid outrage over District Attorney Mike Nifong's handling of the lacrosse case.
Sparks said some forms collected in the Duke drive were from students in off-campus housing.
In past elections, Duke students have not made up a high percentage of the 140,897 registered voters.
In late August, there were 650 registered voters on Duke's East Campus and 712 registered voters on West Campus, according to Ashe, the elections director.
At NCCU, the school where the accuser in the rape case is a student, 1,357 students were registered to vote in late August.
http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/498352.html
* Keep your eyes on the wire.
The father is so out of it he doesn't even try to keep his lies straight. I've read that he's a retired truck driver, but his willy-nilly lying off the top of his head - just blurts out whatever seems convenient and sounds good at the moment - makes him seem more like somebody retired from the lamestream media.