Saturday, August 14, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Democrats grab slight lead in registered voters

GOP held small edge as recently as last week, but big surge at partial deadline helps rivals

CARSON CITY-- For the first time in 2 1/2 years, Nevada Democrats now outnumber Republicans, according to reports obtained Friday from local and state election officials.

The reports show there are 384,492 Democrats and 383,745 Republicans statewide. That's a difference of 747 favoring Democrats -- and the latest evidence that while the GOP's ranks are increasing, they're growing at a slower pace.

With 948,921 registered voters in this battleground state, the Democrats represent 40.5 percent and the Republicans account for 40.4 percent of the total, a difference of just one-tenth of 1 percent. The rest are nonpartisans and splinter-party members.

Republicans held a slight edge as recently as last week. But Democrats benefited from a big surge as a partial registration deadline hit on Aug. 7. That marked the deadline for registering by mail or at satellite locations for the Sept. 7 primary.

People can still register through Aug. 17, but now must do so in person at main offices for election officials around the state. For the Nov. 2 general election, the shut-off date for registration is Oct. 12.

"I've never had anything close to it," Washoe County Registrar Dan Burk said Friday in commenting on the total registration increase to 210,188 in his county. He noted that when registration closed for the November 2002 election, there were about 184,000 registered voters.

"Normally, there's a 4 percent to 5 percent increase in the two years between elections," he said. "We're already at 14 to 15 percent."

A breakdown of the Washoe County numbers showed that as of Friday there were 91,983 Republicans, 76,247 Democrats and 32,485 nonpartisans. The rest are members of various splinter parties.

In Clark County, the current total is 595,035, including 218,958 Republicans, 262,653 Democrats, 91,382 nonpartisans and the rest splinter party members.

Democrats say their get-out-the-vote efforts have given them an edge, but Republicans are questioning how many of the Democrats' newly registered voters will actually make it to the polls.

Efforts to sign up new voters "have been unbelievable," said Sean Smith, John Kerry's campaign spokesman in Nevada. "I've never seen the amount of attention being paid to registration in any other state, and it's clearly paying off."

Chris Carr, the state Republican Party's executive director, has raised questions about possible registration fraud. He said some political groups are paying illegal bounties to people to register voters, adding the bounties encourage people to submit bogus names of registrants to make more money.

While registration is rising, mainly due to interest in the presidential race and in contentious initiative petitions, state demographer Jeff Hardcastle has noted there are nearly 1.7 million eligible voters. That means about 750,000 Nevadans who could vote haven't registered.

Secretary of State Dean Heller has said he hopes to see an eventual registration "well above the 65 percent mark." Now it's at about 55 percent. But even if 70 percent of the possible voters signed up, half a million eligible Nevadans still would be absent from the polls this fall.