"Democratic vote drive taxes registrars in La.; Applicant crush burdens offices" by Shaila Dewan, New York Times News Service | June 15, 2008
NEW YORK - A Democratic voter-registration drive in largely black neighborhoods of Louisiana has swamped the state's voter registrar offices, forcing them to hire new staff members and work 12-hour days to process thousands of applications.
Buoyed by the popularity of Senator Barack Obama, the drive has raised complaints from registrars about large numbers of duplicate, invalid, or incomplete applications, and has led to an investigation by the Louisiana secretary of state, Jay Dardenne, a Republican. Election officials have expressed concern that large numbers of people who believe they are registered will show up at the polls in November, only to find that they cannot vote because their applications had been improperly submitted.
Much of the enthusiasm, and some of the chaos, may be repeated in the months to come in other states where Democrats and liberal groups are planning similar drives in an effort to change the demographics of the electorate. Nationally, 39 percent of eligible blacks and 46 percent of eligible Latinos are not registered to vote, compared with 29 percent of eligible whites, according to a 2006 study by Project Vote, a nonpartisan group that promotes voting in low-income and minority communities.
Project Vote and Acorn, a left-wing national organizing group, have teamed up to conduct large voter drives across the country, with the goal of registering 1.2 million people by Labor Day. They have already submitted 600,000 applications, said Michael Slater, the deputy director of Project Vote. Acorn is among several groups registering voters in Louisiana. The Obama campaign itself has announced a 50-state registration drive known as "Vote for Change."
It remains unclear whether election officials will be prepared to handle more registrations and the potential for overwhelming turnout on Election Day, Slater said. "Party politics is driving up registration at unusually high rates," he said.
He added that it was too soon to tell how much of the gap between black and white registration had closed before the primaries, which produced record turnouts in many states.
Democratic officials said the Louisiana drive, which was called Voting is Power, had produced 74,000 applications by the time it concluded last week. Registrars in the four main parishes where the drive operated report numbers closer to 50,000, but there is no breakdown of how many were submitted to other parishes.
Registrars have reported that as many as a third of the applications cannot be entered into the system, and many of the rest require more information. The state Republican Party called the operation "the Dems' phony registration drive."
Democrats say the burden is on the registrars to double-check and verify application information.
In Louisiana, the biggest complaints about the drive have come from Republican registrars in Caddo Parish, which includes Shreveport; and East Baton Rouge Parish, which includes Baton Rouge; and Jefferson Parish, just outside New Orleans...."
Yup, the COUNTRY sure the hell is SICK of GEORGE W. BUSH and the Republicans!!!!
As well as the WAR PARTY'S ISRAELI-CENTRIC foreign policy agenda!!!!
Also see: Stolen Elections (Part 1)
