Registration drive nets gains for Dems
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Democrats register more than three times the number of new voters than Republicans
10/9/2008 - 10/10/08
Sen. Barack Obama's campaign says it registered 35,500 new voters in New Mexico in the month before this week's deadline.The campaign's goal was to register 30,000 people in the 30 days leading up to the Tuesday cutoff.
"New Mexicans are hungry to get involved in the political process and reject another four year of the same failed Bush economic policies. From Las Vegas to Las Cruces, people are responding to Senator Obama's commitment to making the economy work for middle-class families and fundamentally changing how politics works," Adrian Saenz, New Mexico Campaign for Change's state director, said in a statement.
The number includes both new voters and people who reregistered with new addresses or other information and, compared to 2004, reflects a surge in the number of Democrats registering statewide.
While state Republicans declined to say how many new voters they had signed up, Secretary of State figures as of Thursday showed the Democrats had registered more than three times the number of new voters than Republicans. And the figures showed a larger increase in the number of new voters who declined to state a party than in those who joined the Republican party.
"We have exceeded our goals in new voter registrations across the state and know the ones we have registered are alive, unlike forms submitted by ACORN," state GOP spokeswoman Shira Rawlinson said in a statement.
The swipe at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now was a reference to recent national reports about the group, which have included allegations of fraudulent voter registration forms being turned in by its members.
In Missouri, the co-director of the Jackson County election board said Thursday that forms turned in by the group included duplicate registrations, forms with addresses that don't exist and Social Security and driver's license numbers that couldn't be verified, the Associated Press reported.
Earlier this week, Nevada authorities seized records from ACORN and accused it of submitting fraudulent voter-registration forms, including some in the name of pro football players from Texas, the AP said.
ACORN New Mexico head organizer Matthew Henderson on Thursday outlined the group's quality-control process to catch fraudulent cards. People listed as newly registered are called each night, for example, to verify they registered to vote, Henderson said.
Statewide, current Secretary of State figures show almost 55,000 voters have been added to the state's voter registration rolls since 2004, a number that includes people who reregistered with a new address or name. Those numbers, however, do not include voters who have registered in recent weeks because county clerks are still logging that information and forwarding it to the secretary of state. In Bernalillo County, for example, some 26,000 registrations were outstanding as of Thursday night. In Santa Fe County, there were 2,117 new registrations to process as of Thursday, County Clerk Valerie Espinoza estimated.
The current numbers show Democrats made the biggest gain since the last presidential election. Since 2004, 31,580 people signed up with that party, taking its ranks from 550,519 New Mexicans to 582,099 as of Thursday.
The second-largest increase was in the number of voters who declined to state a party, a figure that increased from 164,986 four years ago to 177,100 this week. Republicans gained 10,212 since the last election, up from 359,563 to 369,775.
The next step in the election game will be to see how many voters each party can turn out to vote before Nov. 4.
Republicans in many New Mexico races have typically cast more early and absentee ballots.
Contact Kate Nash at 986-3036 or knash@sfnewmexican.com. Read her blog, Green Chile Chatter, at www.santafenewmexican.com.
TALLYING THE STATE'S VOTERS
Statewide voter registration before the 2004 presidential election:
Democrats: 550,519
Republicans: 359,563
Declined to state: 164,986
Other: 30,304
Total: 1,105,372
Voter registration as of Thursday:
Democrats: 582,099
Republicans: 369,775
Declined to state: 177,100
Other: 31,421
Total: 1,160,395
Note: Numbers are not final and include 26,000 registrations still to be processed in Bernalillo County.
Source: Secretary of State's Office