DeLaWho? DeLaWhat? DeLaWhere?

As Voting Rolls Increase, So Do the Wild Cards
By JAMES DAO

Published: October 27, 2004
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 26 - Lionel White seems like the kind of new voter who could help the Democrats win this crucial swing state. He is 23, black, works at a fast food restaurant and is angry about the economy, urban blight and the war in Iraq.

But Mr. White registered himself to vote this year for the first time because he was getting paid by the Urban League to register others. He did not watch the debates, confesses to having a marginal interest in politics and feels the candidates are not talking about issues he cares about. He is lukewarm at best about going to the polls next week.

"I don't think either one of them gives a damn about us," he said of the two main presidential candidates while standing on the stoop of his house on the east side of this city.

As Mr. White's story suggests, many newly registered voters are wild cards whose uncertain allegiances could tip the vote in closely contested states like this one, making such voters the focus of an intense tug of war between the parties.

Certainly, their numbers are legion. In Ohio, nearly three-quarters of a million people registered to vote this year, bringing the state's total registration to over 7.8 million, a record. In Iowa, Florida and Pennsylvania as well, registration drives - largely by Democratic groups - have swelled voter rolls to new levels, raising the likelihood that more people will vote this year than since the high-turnout year of 1992, experts said.

The new voters' potential to decide the election has become graphically evident in the streets, on the airwaves and in courtrooms of this state, where Democrats have marched with placards proclaiming "every vote counts," and Republicans have been determinedly challenging thousands of new registrations as fraudulent.

But a fundamental question remains: will the new voters vote? Historically, newly registered voters - because they are younger, more independent or less politically engaged - have voted at lower rates than the rest of the electorate, typically under 50 percent, experts say.

A visit to a Columbus neighborhood where Democratic groups registered voters this year shows the challenge the Kerry campaign faces. Of the six new registrants listed on county records on a single block, three had recently moved, one could not be found and one was listed at a nonexistent address. read on...