MN: Democrats take edge in adding to voter rolls!

[jean]

:dem: http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/5037408.html (subscription)

Democrats take edge in adding to rolls
Pat Doyle, Mark Brunswick and Ron Nixon, Star Tribune
October 18, 2004


Fueled by the passions of the presidential race, voter-registration campaigns have added tens of thousands of Minnesotans to the election rolls from predominantly Democratic cities, nearly twice the new registrations gathered in recent months from heavily Republican areas of the state.

snip

Since June, there have been more than 28,000 new registrations in Minnesota cities that voted decisively for Al Gore in the last presidential election and more than 16,000 registrations in cities that voted decisively for George W. Bush, a Star Tribune analysis of state records found. The newspaper defined a decisive margin as 10 percentage points or more. In all, more than 72,000 new registrations (not counting people who moved or changed their names) were filed between June 1 and Oct. 5, before the final push for preregistration efforts. About 2.5 million Minnesotans voted in the 2000 election, meaning those new registrants, if all of them voted, could constitute 2 percent to 3 percent of the electorate. Seventy-three percent of Minnesotans who are likely to vote said they have "a great deal of interest" in the election, compared with 51 percent in mid-October 2000. While 67 percent of Bush supporters have a high interest in the election, 82 percent of Kerry supporters do. There is no way of knowing how many of the newly registered people will vote or who they will vote for, because the state doesn't require registration by party. Organizers turned their attention last week to prodding registered voters to the polls on Nov. 2.

snip

Much of the grunt work of registering voters was done by organizations outside the major political parties, motivated by a zeal to defeat or reelect President Bush. In Minneapolis, the biggest source of new registrations and a Democratic stronghold, more than 10,500 people joined the voting rolls between June and Oct. 5. Gore won the city by 44 percentage points in 2000.Union members, anti-poverty activists and others who support Democratic causes knocked on doors in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, held dinners in immigrant neighborhoods and visited union workplaces to register people. America Coming Together (ACT), an organization working to defeat Bush, spent part of October looking for citizens to register among the hundreds of Latin American, Somali, Laotian and other immigrants attending adult English classes at the Lehman Center in south Minneapolis.

snip

Registration efforts in support of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney included a group at the baggage claim area of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport last week with registration cards, lawn signs and sign-up sheets.The Minnesota Republican Party said most of its voter-registration efforts have been conducted by its College Republican group on campuses. The party also said it registered a number of new voters at a booth at the State Fair, where it used the national party's Reggie the Rally Rig, an 18-wheel truck with interactive multimedia technology and a sound stage. The party uses its "Team Leader" program to target special interest groups with voter-registration efforts. There are team leaders for snowmobilers, Catholics and small-business owners.

[mzmolly]

1. Awesome!

:hi: