Posted on 10/02/2004 12:19:49 AM PDT by ambrose
Posted on Sat, Oct. 02, 2004
Voters Swell Pa. Rolls
Officials are scrambling to get all the names on the books by Election Day.
By Tom Infield
Inquirer Staff Writer
Tens of thousands of names are being added to the rolls of eligible Pennsylvania voters.
With Monday the deadline for people to register to vote, election officials say they haven't seen so much political interest in years, even decades.
They attribute that to the intense battleground that Pennsylvania has become as one of a few big states that could swing either way Nov 2.
"People feel very strongly: I know I do," said Tom Colman, a Chester County Republican who was knocking on doors last weekend in Devon, trying to enroll people to vote.
A day or two earlier, in Philadelphia's Germantown section, a pro-Democratic worker said she was not surprised by what she found in the 5500 block of Crowson Street: Everybody she met on the long block of rowhouses was already signed up.
"This late in the game, there are an awful lot of people who are registered," said Kimberlyn Short, who works for America Coming Together, a group trying to oust President Bush that says it alone has registered 130,000 people in Pennsylvania.
The major parties and their allies have mounted an unprecedented effort to increase the number of voters in geographic areas and among demographic groups in which they believe their candidate will do well.
Across the Philadelphia region, Democrats appear to be making comparative gains. This is true not only in the city, but also in the four suburban counties, where Democrats have been partially eroding long-standing GOP majorities for a decade.
Officials say it will require late nights and weekends to enter all the names on the books before the election. (Mail-in applications must be postmarked by Monday.)
"Things are hectic, but we're on top of it," said Edward Schulgen, deputy city commissioner. "We have every available body - mandatory overtime, no vacation, no personal days."
In heavily Democratic Philadelphia, which accounted for 11 percent of the 4.91 million votes cast in Pennsylvania in 2000, officials had processed 164,641 forms as of Sept. 21 - 128,184 Democratic registrations and 14,509 Republican registrations.
Those included voters who had merely changed their addresses or changed parties. The total of new names - people who were not registered at all - won't be known until the count is completed. So far, it has exceeded 57,000.
The deluge of registrations received in the city surely will surpass anything since 1983, officials say. In that year, 293,000 people enrolled or changed parties to vote in a primary that pitted a former mayor, Frank L. Rizzo, against W. Wilson Goode, who that year became the city's first black mayor.
Each new form must be entered into a computer. The names, addresses and party affiliations - along with an image of voter signatures - then must be put into the books that go the polls. Philadelphia alone has 1,682 polling places.
Frederick Voigt, executive director of the Committee of Seventy, an election-oversight group, voiced confidence that Philadelphia election staffers would keep up with the workload. "They will get the job done," he said.
But in Montgomery County, a Democratic leader said he was concerned that the election office there could be overwhelmed.
Marcel Groen, the party chairman, said the load was being compounded by a slew of applications for absentee ballots.
He said he was prepared to go to court, if necessary, to get the Montgomery County Board of Elections to hire more staff. "I'm just monitoring it," he said. "I hope everything is done properly and there is no problem."
Joanne Santangelo, supervisor of voter registration for the county, said: "Everything will be in. We have plenty of time from the close of registration until we have to print the poll books... . We're working night and day here."
As of last Friday, Montgomery County had logged 13,529 Democratic registrations and 9,149 Republican registrations since the April primary. Those included not only new names, but changes of address and party.
Elsewhere, election boards were also working overtime and, in some cases, seven days a week.
"Today is our 21st day in a row without a day off," Deena Dean, director of the Bucks County election board, said Monday. "And I expect it will be like this until Election Day." She said the volume of registrations "is just impossible to keep up with."
In Bucks, 15,901 voters had been logged in, including 6,697 Democrats and 5,284 Republicans.
In Delaware County, workers had logged 16,679 registrations as of a recent count, including 8,819 Democrats and 5,113 Republicans.
Even in Chester County - the sole suburban county that gave a majority to Bush in his 2000 race against Democratic Vice President Al Gore - Democrats may be making small gains.
Information provided earlier this week by Chester County officials showed that, as of Labor Day weekend, 4,371 Democrats had been added to the rolls, compared with 2,956 Republicans. But Republicans said they had yet to file many of the applications they had collected in door-to-door efforts last month.
No firm conclusion about which side has gained more from Pennsylvania registration efforts can be made until final numbers are in.
The election workers and volunteers who have brought on the influx were still hard at work last weekend.
In Chester County, Republicans organized a door-to-door campaign in Tredyffrin Township.
Early on, the party set a goal of registering 23 new voters in each of the county's 220 precincts. The effort is partly fueled by a perception that the party got out-hustled in 2000.
"We felt strongly that we were beaten on the ground, and we're not going to allow it to happen again," said John Waldeyer, the Tredyffrin GOP chairman.
But the Democratic registration effort is, if anything, stronger than it was in 2000. That is partly a result of work by America Coming Together, which is officially independent of the Democratic Party but which aims to defeat Bush.
In Germantown last week, workers from the group had found an equal interest.
"Bush needs to be gone," said Andrea Simms, a mother of three who also was already signed up as a Democrat.
In their registration efforts, Democrats and Republicans have sought to target certain people.
For Democrats, that has meant black residents, union members, women who support abortion rights, and people in urban areas, among others seen as likely to vote for Kerry. For Republicans, the effort has been targeted at white men, rural residents and churchgoers, among others likely to be for Bush.
The voting-age population in Pennsylvania is estimated at 9.5 million. As of the April primary, 7.6 million names were on the voter books.
As of April, in the last statewide count, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by about 400,000 voters - 3.6 million to 3.2 million.
In 2000, when Gore defeated Bush in Pennsylvania by 204,840 votes, the number of ballots cast eclipsed that of any election since 1992, when 4.96 million people voted.
Neil Oxman, a Democratic consultant in the state for more than three decades, predicted that the number of voters Nov. 2 would "blow past 5 million," the most since 1960.
"People think there is a huge stake in this election," Oxman said.
ambrose, these dims intend to make Kerry the traitor President one way or another. Rules, laws, morals, nothing will deter them.
George Soros will try to steal the election to guarantee his quest to increase his billions, by making the democrat party beholden for his multi-millions to fund vote fraud on an unprecedented scale.
wow, i wonder how many dead people are voting this year, nothing new in this city
Oh, this gives me a bad deeling. With the race tighening, they can steal it with fraud. I guess I'll do what I can-- vote and pray. If Bush is meant to be re-elected, he will.
I think most of us have known for quite awhile that Democrats will cheat to win. But I am more worried this election year than any other because of the pure hatred and ignorance many democrats have for Bush. I have no doubt they are committing fraud in this election and I think it's worse than in 2000. I agree we have to do everything we can to stop this fraud and bring it to public attention. We can't just talk about it if we aren't prepared to do whatever we can in our current position to fix the problem. I just hope that the Bush Campaign and the RNC are taking this very serious and have equal or even more resource's to find and prevent these things from happening before the election and on election day. We need an equal amount of lawyers at these polling places if not more. This is a very serious threat and I think the election fraud committed by the Democrats this election is worse than it has been in quite awhile. We have to do whatever it takes to prevent this and get President George W. Bush Re-elected this November.
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