New voters coming out in droves

By Ford Fessenden
The New York Times

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — A sweeping voter-registration campaign in heavily Democratic areas has added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded Republican efforts in both states, a review of registration data shows.

The analysis of county-by-county data shows that in Democratic areas of Ohio — primarily low-income and minority neighborhoods — new registrations since January have increased 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In comparison, new registrations have increased 25 percent in Republican areas.

A similar pattern is apparent in Florida: In the strongest Democratic areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent higher than in 2000, while it has risen 12 percent in the heaviest Republican areas.

While comparable data could not be obtained for other swing states, party officials on both sides say record numbers of new voters are being registered nationwide. This largely hidden but deadly earnest battle is widely believed by experts to be potentially decisive in the presidential election.

"We know it's going on, and it's a very encouraging sign," said Steve Elmendorf, deputy campaign manager for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. New voters, Elmendorf said, "could very much be the difference."

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson declined to comment on the findings and said she did not believe Republicans were lagging in the registration battle. "We're very confident that we have a ground game that's as good as the Democrats', and better," she said.

Unpredictable impact

The precise impact is difficult to predict, as there is no reliable gauge of how many new voters will vote. Some experts, though, say the spike has not been captured accurately by polls and could confound prognostications in closely contested states.

Much of the effort is being directed by civil-rights and community groups, as well as soft-money organizations allied with Democrats. One such Democratic umbrella group, America Votes, says its constituents will spend $300 million on registration and turnout in swing states, dwarfing the $150 million in public financing the two candidates together will receive for the fall campaign.
 
The registration drives are only the first step in a campaign by each side to persuade more Americans to vote by using personal contact. In many states that have early October cutoffs for registration, efforts will shift to staying in touch through Election Day with repeated phone calls and visits, and, on Nov. 2, ferrying people to the polls.

Studies have shown that calling voters and showing up at their houses before and on Election Day substantially increases turnout — and is cheaper per vote than buying a television advertisement. Republicans used the strategy with great success in the 2002 elections.

But Donald Green, a Yale political-science professor who has conducted many of those studies, said there was no reliable way to tell how many new voters would turn out at the polls, especially those from lower-income areas.

"Do you get 30 percent, or do you get 70 percent?" he said. "To the extent that these new voters are on the radar screen of groups that have the kind of resources these groups have at their disposal, they might well turn out."

Steve Rosenthal, chief executive of Americans Coming Together, a soft-money group that is trying to register Democrats, said he believed they would.

"I think what's happening on the streets, below the radar, is what's going to make the big difference on Election Day," said Rosenthal, who said his organization and the other groups would register 2.5 million new Democratic voters nationwide.

But Republican officials say they remain confident that their voters will prove easier to get to the polls. "It would scare me if we weren't doing our own thing," said Joanne Davidson, regional chairwoman of the Bush campaign in four Midwestern states, including Ohio.

The Ohio numbers

Republican officials say they think the paid workers who are registering low-income voters are sloppy. Matt Damschroder, director of Ohio's Board of Elections, said he had to throw out many of the cards he received because the voters already were registered. "One woman had signed a card three different times," with three groups, he said.

Prosecutors in Columbus have filed criminal charges against an Acorn registrar, saying he filed a false registration form and forged a signature. Officials for the group say they fired the worker and instituted a quality checking system before prosecutors acted.

Nevertheless, an examination of county registration records shows that the groups have added thousands of new Democrats to the rolls and have far outnumbered new registrations in Republican areas.

In a 300-square-block area east of the courthouse in downtown Columbus that voted 9 to 1 against Bush in 2000, for instance, 3,000 new voters have registered this year. That is three times as many as in each of the past two presidential election years. The number of registered voters in the area is up 18 percent since January.

By comparison, in a prosperous area north of downtown with a similar number of voters who are overwhelmingly Republican, 1,100 new voters have been added, increasing rolls by 7 percent.

These numbers are similar across Ohio. Registration from Jan. 1 to July 31 was examined in a sample of counties that included seven of the state's nine largest, along with smaller rural and suburban counties. Voters do not give a party affiliation when they register in Ohio, but the voting history of ZIP codes were used to gauge the political inclinations of the new voters.

In rock-ribbed Republican areas — 103 ZIP codes, many of them rural and suburban areas, that voted by 2 to 1 or better for President Bush in 2000 — 35,000 new voters have registered, a substantial increase over the 28,000 that registered in those areas in the first seven months of 2000.

"It's not easy work, but we go door-to-door in strong Republican precincts, making sure everyone is registered," said Chris McNulty, the state party chairman.

But in heavily Democratic areas — 60 ZIP codes mostly in the core of big cities such as Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus and Youngstown that voted 2 to 1 or better against Bush — new registrations have more than tripled.

Big jumps in Florida

In Florida, where data from 60 of the state's 67 counties were analyzed, new registrations also are running far ahead of the 2000 pace, with Republican areas trailing Democratic ones. In 150 ZIP codes that voted most heavily for Bush, 96,000 new voters have registered, up from 86,000 in 2000, an increase of about 12 percent.

But in the heaviest of Democratic areas, 110 ZIP codes that gave two-thirds or more of their votes to Al Gore, new registrations have increased to 125,000 from 77,000, a jump of more than 60 percent.

In Duval County, where a confusing ballot design in 2000 helped disqualify thousands of ballots in black precincts, new registrations by black voters are up 150 percent over 2000.

The groups are building nationwide databases and have committed millions of dollars for continued contact with the voters before and on Election Day.

"If every Democrat showed up at the polls, you'd win, no question," said James Koehler, a precinct organizer in Columbus working for MoveOn.org, another soft-money group. Koehler said MoveOn hoped to have a volunteer in every precinct to call neighbors Nov. 2.

Republicans in Ohio, as well as nationwide, have accused the independent groups of essentially flouting campaign-finance law. But they clearly are concerned about their impact. "I would say we are in the unfortunate position of having to fight a two-front war," said McNulty, the Ohio party chairman. "I'd be a lot less concerned if it was just us against the Democrats and the Kerry campaign, but unfortunately it's not."